Welcome everyone and welcome one and all . Today we have a special kind of video for you all.
I'm Casey, also known as the co-founder of GTAGaming.com, a GTA fansite started by myself
and my friend Kyle back in 2001/2002 roughly, so I've been a GTA fan since I was like, a fetus.
This is a one-of-a-kind production, mainly written by Yan2295 and edited by GTASeriesVideos.
In this video we want to talk to you about the ever-evolving modding scene of the Grand Theft Auto series, from its very beginning
to the latest troublesome events that have risen lately.
As always, thanks are in order to aap, Ash_735, _CP_, Boywond, dkluin, Nihilist, Sergiu, Silent,
theNGclan, Wildbrick142, Xinerki, Zolika1351 and all the modders out there who have spent
their time and their abilities into making possible something that had seemed impossible.
Modifying single player games has been around for as long as PC games have and mods have
arguably become an increasingly important factor in the commercial success of some games,
like Doom - the very first game to have a large modding community.
Mods add a depth to the original work made by the developers and can be both useful to
players and a mean of self-expression and discovery.
"Mods, for me, are a form of personal expression.
You can change the inner workings of a game you enjoy, personalizing the entire experience.
There's really nothing else quite like it.
Plus, you get to learn how some super cool games work."
"I think there's an innate human desire to create and help other people, and modding fulfills that perfectly.
Creating a new car, adding a new feature, fixing a bug, it all comes down to one thing:
Creation.
When I look at the download count of one of my mods, that's not just a number, those are
all actual people who enjoy something I have created."
Mods have even been the starting point of what later became games on their own that
we all know, like Counter-Strike, DOTA 2, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds
and many, many more. The GTA series is no exception.
Modding started with the very first 2D titles with simple modifications changing the in-game
vehicle textures or adding an additional language.
GTA is not Half Life nor The Witcher, but thanks to its notoriety, it does count thousands
of mods available for each title in the series.
Modding has been accepted and welcomed by DMA Design first and Rockstar Games later
with the developers even giving a hand to the modders to create tools and better identify
problems and script in order to add or change something in the game.
But this liaison started to crack in 2005 after the Hot Coffee controversy.
Discovered and named "Hot Coffee Mod" by Patrick Wildenborg, also known as PatrickW,
this modification gave access to a minigame that was completely disabled in the final
version of San Andreas, in which players were allowed, as protagonist Carl "CJ" Johnson,
to have animated sexual intercourse with an in-game girlfriend of their choosing.
After a first attempted defense by Rockstar focused on blaming the modder, attempt even
criticized by Houser himself, Rockstar released a patch for the original version to disable
access to the minigame.
"It was a pretty big deal at that time.
I remember getting an email from Rockstar Games themselves asking us to remove any mention
or the mod itself from our site, which we did because we wanted to stay in good terms
with them and we didn't want to get in trouble.
From that point onward, we didn't really hear much from Rockstar up until there was
a GTA IV event, so this was a good few years later until we really started to connect with
Rockstar again after this whole thing happened."
"The Hot Coffee incident was one of the original turning points where Rockstar Games threw
modders under the bus.
For a while after it felt like the relationship between Rockstar and the modding community
was at odds BUT they never made things difficult for the community and by the time of
Grand Theft Auto IV they even laughed at the event themselves, followed by them posting about
mods and such on their own Newswire."
After the class action suit against Rockstar Games for the part they played in the infamous
"Hot Coffee" scandal has finally been resolved, granting all US citizens who were offended
by the event up to $35, Rockstar connection with the modding world had definitely changed.
While they still approved the work made by the modders and even promoted it from time
to time on their website, devs were not allowed anymore to give help or information that involved
the alteration of in-game files.
From that moment up until mid-2017, nothing really changed.
Take-Two in more than one occasion made the headlines by shutting down huge modding projects
life for example porting the first Red Dead Redemption into GTA V, or hunting down a dev-kit containing
beta details about their latest title and more.
But hell had yet to break loose.
On June, 14 2017 a bombshell hit the GTA modding community.
OpenIV, a file explorer and editor for GTA 4, GTA 5 and Max Payne 3, an essential tool
in modding, was being shut down due to a legal notice from Take-Two.
The claim stated that OpenIV allowed "third parties to defeat security features of its
software and modify that software in violation of Take-Two's rights".
A few days later, Rockstar Games released an official statement explaining that Take-Two's
actions were not specifically targeting single player mods, but that unfortunately OpenIV
enabled malicious mods that allowed harassment of players and interfere with the GTA Online
experience for everybody".
They even reiterate their support to the creative modding community by affirming that actions
were taken to assure that the modding community could keep living.
The community didn't fully accept Rockstar's apologies because of the flaw in their statement.
OpenIV had nothing to do with GTA Online and it could only be used to modify the single player experience.
A few days passed before Take-Two came back on their decision and decided to allow OpenIV
to be distributed again, with Rockstar Games publishing an agreement listing what was tolerated and what not.
To summarize, Take-Two would not allow content from the 3D era GTA games or from non-Rockstar
games to be ported to Rockstar titles published after 2007, and wouldn't allow mods affecting
the online games, such as GTA Online and Red Dead Online.
For once, the whole community came together in support of OpenIV as one big voice that
has put Take-Two in the position to have to listen to GTA fans.
While I do not always agree with massive bandwagons and review brigading, for once I feel like
this was completely justified because through harsh action, we've gotten contact and agreement.
We were no longer ignored or silenced.
We've been heard.
It simply had to be done in order to protect our community and modding as a whole.
More happened from that date on, but in July 2021 another bombshell was dropped by Take-Two
onto the GTA modding community.
As reported by Ash_735, Take-Two sent several DMCA take down notices to popular mod hosting
websites such as GTA5-Mods and ModDB in regards to several older GTA mods, mainly porting
and total conversions.
We're talking of projects like GTA: Underground, a 15 years old GTA San Andreas mod combining
the maps of San Andreas, Liberty City, Vice City, Bully and both Manhunt games into one big map.
Another mod hit was GTA:LC a total conversion modification porting the entirety of GTA 3
into GTA Vice City and GTA: State of Liberty, another GTA Vice City modification adding
features from GTA San Andreas and GTA 3 into an enhanced version of Vice City.
More DMCA take down has been served to various mods and hosting websites in August with other
total conversions being shut down like Open Manhunt, a GTA San Andreas project who brought
all the various stages of both Manhunts into the game.
While is understandable under the new EULA, but still debatable, why certain projects
have been taken down, none of the previously mentioned mods were breaking the new rules
imposed by Rockstar Games and Take-Two in 2017.
Or at least that is what it looked like.
The community found out that the previously discussed agreement has been modified again
in 2019 with a new line specifying that on top of not allowing modders to port content
from other games, they are now not allowed to create new content either for any of their games.
So, in other words, if before it wasn't allowed to port stuff from the 3D era to the RAGE
era and viceversa, now is simply not allowed to port content from any game into a different one.
But that's not all.
According to the new rules sneakily edited in 2019, borrowing assets from other IPs or
making new games, stories, missions or maps is no more allowed, meaning that original
projects like GTA: The '95 Story or Tiki Island are no more allowed, despite them being original
content made for one single game without importing anything from a different IP.
In simpler words, according to this new agreement, modding is no longer allowed, period.
For now, Rockstar Games have remained silent on the matter, but in a recent investor call,
Take-Two was asked by an investor why they started removing old Grand Theft Auto mods
through some DMCA takedown requests.
This is Strauss Zelnick's response:
"In terms of takedowns we're pretty flexible frankly, that said if the economy is threatened
or if there is bad behavior - and we know how to define that - then we would issue a takedown notice."
Bad behavior aside - which would be nice to understand how Take-Two defines it in order
to understand the actual limits of what is allowed and what not - it's clear that their main reason is monetary.
It's plausible to think that Take-Two are taking down those mods in preparation for
the announcement and release of a GTA trilogy remaster - a new release of GTA 3, Vice City
and San Andreas in a different suit and for new platforms.
As some people pointed out, this all happened only a few short days before the release of
a massive GTA Online update long awaited by the community.
It almost looks like Take-Two timed these DMCA notices in a way that distracts, putting fansite
focus on the new GTA Online update and away from the DMCA take down notices.
It's without surprise that these events once again caused a massive uproar in the GTA community,
with many modders deciding to pull the plug on their projects and retire, as well as leaving
many wondering what's next for the future of modding.
Here's what some of the most prolific and known modders from the community have to say on this matter:
"If they're gonna keep going this route, GTA modding will probably be extinct, and that's absurd.
GTA and modding go hand-in-hand pretty much since the beginning of this franchise beloved
by many, it simply can't be allowed to happen."
"I am heartbroken seeing so many super talented people I know personally, some of them I'm
grateful to call friends, being disenfranchised by a faceless corporate bully.
I personally find it simply despicable to wage a war against the very people who dedicate
their time and effort to make your games only bigger and better, who ensure they don't die
out, who never ask for anything in return and who, ultimately, promote your products for free."
"I think Take-Two's actions are entirely misguided and unnecessary.
Whoever thinks that mods are a “threat” to official products is wrong, as none of
the creations they took down attempted to misguide people into believing they are official
entries of the franchise.
I think these actions will do them more harm than good, as modding always was (and hopefully
will still be) a major driving force for a lot of people interested in GTA."
"Modding is a grey area because yes, it's written in the agreement that reverse engineering,
changing, distributing files, etc, is forbidden, but [...] it's a “contract” where specific
rules are enforced or not depending on whoever at Take-Two is in charge on that day, but
going for the nuke option just doesn't make sense [...] it's madness when you think about
it and comes across as a total power play."
"I believe there are many shades to this situation - on one hand it's just a company trying to
harness control over and protect the use of their intellectual property, but at the same
time we're merely fans doing this out of love and fondness for these games.
To me, as long as it doesn't leave Take-Two out of pocket or damage their franchise's
reputation, I see all of their measures as overstepping rational protection limits."
There is no doubt that the modding community has helped the GTA franchise over the years
by breathing new life into the 2D, 3D and HD era GTA games. As said by Ash_735, "in terms of the 3D era GTA games, mods are
essential to play those games properly.
Mods like SilentPatch, SkyGFX, Ginput and WidescreenFix are the minimum requirements
now because of how broken these old ports are on modern systems."
Modding has even brought new people to this franchise thanks to entirely new creations and new features
that the game didn't originally have.
"Singleplayer games are kind of eternal as they don't require servers”, as said by Zolika1351.
“Most of the time modding is absolutely required to keep the games playable and up
to standards, and add replayability with new features."
As pointed out by Nihilist, “modding has been even something that Rockstar looked at
to develop new things in their games, like GTA IV's Editor which was a reaction to the
popularity of GTA San Andreas' machinima videos."
Modding is not just a texture or a line of code.
"Modding is half of my life.
I met a lot of people, shared my knowledge with others.
Modding also led me into improving my skills while working in a team of talented great people.
I feel like it helped me be more confident and useful."
"Take-Two basically closes off ways for many new potential creators for whom modding could
spark a new interest or a life-time goal, lots of talent could go to waste because of this."
"Modding is not just about a bunch of enthusiasts tinkering with their favourite games.
There have been examples of modding making careers or branching off to separate commercial
games, and I think that's another important aspect of it.
By doubling down on modding, a wide range of potential future game developers may just get discouraged."
"Modding really just represents love towards the GTA franchise in more ways than one, it's
dedication to an absurd level to treat these games with so much respect and importance
that people feel the need to improve upon them.
It's either that or the fact that it's often a cheap and easy way to create something and
let your imagination run wild, much easier compared to actual game development.
All in all, modding is either a love letter to a franchise we've grown up with or an amazing
outlet for young wannabe game designers to test the waters early on."
It goes without saying that the intent of a mod is not to hurt the game, but to expand
it, to make it more accessible, appealing and more.
A mod could help the sales of a game by drawing more people to it.
"Mods very much improve single player games.
Developers do not have the time and resources to include every single little thing that anybody might want.
It's a very unrealistic expectation.
Thus, modding helps to fill that gap.
You have DYOM to add more stories to GTA SA, or the Vanillaworks community adding cars
that would otherwise never be added, or the remastered map mods for any game giving you
more places to play on.
There's something for everyone, and even if there isn't, nothing's stopping you or anyone
from making it a reality.
[...] Modders can make their own bugfixes that greatly improve the game quality, such
as the most famous SilentPatch.
There's absolutely nothing hurting singleplayer games."
"Mods, as long as they aren't things designed to harm multiplayer environments, should be
accepted for what they are: free passion projects that are made by fans for fans.
It's an effort to understand said games while also breathing new life into them for years
to come, and quite frankly the gaming industry owes a lot to the eccentric software engineers
that have worked on mods for so many years."
The one question no one can answer is what does the future hold for the GTA modding scene.
The rules have been changed and surely the clear step made by Rockstar Games from singleplayer
open-world developer into Games-as-a-service developer, will not help the modding community.
While it can't be argued that the sole owner of the GTA franchise and therefore rule maker
is Take-Two Interactive, we do hope that they can start looking at modding the way we do,
without solely focusing on anonymous data that doesn't really help being in touch with
those who are probably some of their most dedicated fans.
And that's all for this video.
We want to thank again all the modders interviewed by Yan2295 and all the hundreds of creators
releasing every day wonderful modifications, and we sincerely hope the best possible outcome.
This video has been a community project and we do hope you enjoyed it.
Keep following GTASeriesVideos on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram or jump in
the Discord Server with thousands of other fans of Rockstar Games.
This has been Casey and I thank you for watching.