The reasons why didn’t matter to some modders, as many began removing old content or shutting down mods out of fear of legal threats and attacks from Take-Two. In September, shortly after Kotaku reported that Rockstar was indeed developing GTA remasters, the devs behind GTA Underground killed the mod after six years, citing increased “hostility towards the modding community” as well as “imminent danger to our mental and financial well-being.”

Advertisement
Advertisement

As you might expect, modders were furious with Rockstar and Take-Two for attacking mods and fan creators after years and years of letting them tinker with classic GTA games. Many expressed frustration that, after helping to keep games like GTA III playable and popular after 20 years, Rockstar didn’t reach out to modders to ask for help or support with the remasters, but instead lashed out using lawyers and legal notices. It rubbed many the wrong way.

On top of all of this, Rockstar also made the decision to remove the original GTA games from console and PC storefronts, with little warning and no assurance that these classics will ever return. So fans and the GTA community are left with these remasters and not much else. Considering the sorry state of these remasters, many are hoping that modders might once again save the day with free labor and passion. However, that might not happen either, after all the legal issues and takedowns over the past year.

Advertisement

Now, in the wake of the disastrous launch of the Definitive Edition Trilogy, many of the GTA modders I spoke to seemed mostly uninterested in the remakes, beyond sharing silly bugs and glitches on Twitter.

Popular GTA modder Silent, known for his wonderful patches that fix and improve the classic GTA games, told me that he doesn’t “care much” about the remakes, but was happy to see the backlash online. “I think it’s a good thing that it seems like Rockstar may finally be reaching the point where *a lot* of people are fed up with their actions.”

Ash_735, another popular GTA modder, expressed frustration over the whole situation, explaining to Kotaku that many modders and community members have always wished that Rockstar would behave more like Valve or Bethesda, supporting modders and their creations. If that had been the case, Ash reckons this whole situation would have gone down differently and involved a lot more happy fans and players. But sadly, that’s not the approach Rockstar took.

Advertisement

“Instead of recruiting people from this community, I guess something Take-Two and Rockstar see as beneath them, we’re instead dealing with abuse of DMCA and lawsuits,” said Ash.

“Things could’ve been different, things could’ve been more positive but in the end, it’s Rockstar’s and Take-Two’s choice to fight this community instead and sadly it will always be a back and forth, they want to push to make modifying game assets illegal, meanwhile we’ve already got people modding the Definitive Editions, we’ve got people with cracked copies of the game enjoying it whilst actual buyers are being punished by Rockstar’s own launcher.”

Advertisement

Silent has publicly tweeted that folks shouldn’t expect him or most other popular modders to step in to fix Rockstar’s remasters.

“People generally have better things to do than do unpaid work for others that won’t be acknowledged nor appreciated,” tweeted Silent.

Advertisement

As players continue to share videos and screenshots of terrible-looking weather effects, missing fog, annoying bugs, broken textures, and more, it’s obvious someone will need to fix these remasters. And due to Rockstar and Take-Two’s continued fight against modders and fan devs, unlike before, the community most likely won’t be coming to improve these games anytime soon.