An attempt at a lawsuit by Take-Two Interactive and Rockstar Games is being fought back against by the GTA modders it’s targeting, who are claiming Fair Use against the companies’ accusations of piracy. The conflict comes over Rockstar’s recently-released GTA Remastered Trilogy of Grand Theft Auto 3 and its expansions.
Those games only came out a few days ago, and are already facing significant criticism due to a wealth of bugs and graphical issues, despite supposedly being “remastered” for current-gen consoles. The criticism is even more significant because the modders that Rockstar and Take-Two are currently suing were responsible for making graphical mods that helped with the normal versions of the games look better to begin with.
The drama began earlier this year, when the modders in question put out the “re3” and “reVC” graphical mods for Grand Theft Auto 3 and its Vice City expansion to upgrade their graphics and textures. These mods were a hit with fans, but were DMCA’d by Take Two and Rockstar.
Overall, the drama over the GTA modders is that Rockstar and Take-Two believe that their mods could be used to distribute pirated versions of Grand Theft Auto 3 and its expansions, despite the mods being graphical in nature and, by the arguments of the modders, Fair Use. Even worse is that Take-Two and Rockstar had previously encouraged modding of its games.
It’s easy to take such accusations by Take-Two and Rockstar as being sour grapes, considering the negative reception of the Remastered Collection due to its graphical issues, when re3 and reVC both made the games look much better. The PC version of the games is also facing significant issues, enough that the game was pulled from PC stores briefly. Reviews for the trilogy have also been bombed down to 0.5 on Metacritic.
Hopefully the court sides with the GTA modders in the lawsuit, especially given that modding is a thing across every PC game out there. In the meantime, if you can stomach the awful graphics, the GTA Remastered Trilogy on the PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Playstation 4, Xbox Series X, and Playstation 5.