Take 2 Interactive shuts down OpenIV

[Quagsire]

So as some of you know, if not all, the creator of OpevIV, after 10 years of development, has received a cease and desist from the publishers of GTA 5, Take 2 Interactive. OpevIV has provided easy modding for GTA 4 and 5 for a decade, and after all these years, the popular tool for SP modding is coming to a stop, without known reason either. Here are some tweets made by the developer, on both of his accounts:

 

 

 

Edited June 15, 2017 by AbsorbedHatch

[DooM_RO]

Cunts.

[Reisal]

Yep, Take Two are being gigantic douchebags now.

[Nevander]

Why don't they just keep working on it under the radar? Who's gonna stop them?

[geo]

2 hours ago, Nevander said:

Why don't they just keep working on it under the radar? Who's gonna stop them?

It worked well for Duke Forever.

 

Never heard of openIV. Who are they what did they do? Easy modding? Crazy.

[scalliano]

OpenIV is an archive management/editing tool for RAGE engine games that has been around for roughly a decade without incident. It allows for things like models and scripts to be added to the game and/or modified. Basically, it is the sole means by which GTA IV, V and Max Payne 3 can be modded beyond external script injection. And Take Two just killed it for completely made-up reasons in the hope that it would coerce PC players into spending more money on Shark cards for the Online mode.

 

All this just days after T2's CEO stated that the game was undermonetized, despite making $1.78bn last year. Not a coincidence in any way, shape or form.

[Voros]

*slowly claps*

[Gez]

It's called OpenIV, but I don't see a GitHub or Bitbucket.

 

You should always go for open source with these things, let a thousand people create forks.

[Quagsire]

It'll end up the same way OpenIV did, so there's no point honestly.

[Doomkid]

Not really. If it's open source people will continually pick up the reins despite this nonsense.

[Lila Feuer]

1 hour ago, Gez said:

It's called OpenIV, but I don't see a GitHub or Bitbucket.

 

You should always go for open source with these things, let a thousand people create forks.

Someone else said the same thing, ironic it's called OpenIV but it's closed source, so nobody can fork it to keep it going.

Also this entire situation is lame and stupid. R* have said in the past that they never had a problem with modding but obviously Take-Two doesn't see it from the same viewpoint and got greedy. Online effectively ruined any chance of GTA V getting further single player oriented content as well as any expansions like the prior GTA had. Take-Two also seem to have a history of being bullies and scaring modders in the flesh with legal boogeymen and even acting shitty towards distributors on launch for GTA V too.

It's a serious shame that they're R*'s parent company because even if R* with all the money they've made on these games were to get around this mess and just self-publish they'd lose their IPs, tools, engines, their namesake etc. effectively committing career suicide so that's not even a viable option.

E: Does Take-Two really think they're losing sales from modding when a good chunk of the buyers are getting the games exactly for the modding potential? Face it for instance, if nobody liked Elder Scrolls series nobody would be playing them, and thus nobody would be modding for them either, but they are a highly popular series and are famous for their modding scenes and thus rake in a hell of a lot of dough. No lost revenue there, so why kill the very fan base and their creativity over the years over some fucking GTA Online sales because people are sick of the shark card bullshit and crappy DLC content? Greed really turned them into something fierce and I'd really hate to see this trend spread to another popular series with a strong modding scene.

Edited June 16, 2017 by cyan0s1s

[axdoomer]

Lawyers are good at scaring people. 

 

Giving away the source code may not be illegal. In some countries, one can evade the law by distributing the program in the form of source code. 

[Pencil of Doom]

That's a retarded decision, then again, T2I are a bunch of pussies, always resorting to low tactics.

 

[[McD] James]

So can people still play GTA 5 mods, or can they just no longer develop them using Open 4?

[DooM_RO]

Just imagine what a riot they would cause if someone messed with OUR game and modding scene.

[Maisth]

This was a matter of time

[Reisal]

On 6/17/2017 at 6:45 AM, DooM_RO said:

Just imagine what a riot they would cause if someone messed with OUR game and modding scene.

 

Pretty sure our community is tenfold in size compared to GTA series.

[Linguica]

Are you crazy? The online GTA scene is enormous. Just between GTA5 and GTA Online, it's brought in BILLIONS of dollars for the publisher. I remember seeing a story about how microtransactions alone have netted $500 million.

[Quagsire]

Either way, I see no reason to shut down the SP modding scene, at least no valid reason to. Rockstar themselves have shown open support for these types of mods, since the days of GTA 4.

[scalliano]

The reason is to coerce SP players into Online by making SP as unattractive as possible. You're not playing GTAO, you're not paying your way. The £50/$60 entry fee doesn't count. Take2 want whales, not minnows.

 

Also:

 

[Empyre]

Boycott them to show them that alienating their customers is bad for business.

[scalliano]

The fear is that they are simply too big to care.

[Quasar]

Another example of the gross overreach of the DMCA and similar reciprocal laws that have been pushed through WIPO and other treaties. Under copyright, there is usually a statute of limitations well shorter than 10 years under which you could counter that the company in question had reasonable opportunity to know of and respond to the actions in question and their case would be made invalid. But under these pre-emptive strike style laws, there's no such thing and a shitty company like this can just change their mind suddenly after a decade and claim you're violating their copyrights.

 

Of course this guy is Russian which grossly complicates the entire thing. They can probably throw you in the gulag for 20 years over there just for thinking you have equal representation under the law :P

[Reisal]

Overall score is down to Mixed now.

[torekk]

As far as I got it, OpenIV was shut down since there was a version of it out there that had online support. That version then got used to create "hacks" you could use online, but you'd have to pay for them. That's what bugged Take2, other people making money with their content.

 

What I don't get though, most game companies ignore that, because cheaters usually rake in more money than normal gamers. I mean a normal person like you and me propably buys the game once, a cheater however as much times as he finds fun in cheating. I knew a guy who spent most of his money on Battlefield 2 and hacks for it... 

[Reisal]

Correct, someone other than the official OpenIV team made a hacked online version in which why this shit is happening.

[DooM_RO]

3 hours ago, torekk said:

As far as I got it, OpenIV was shut down since there was a version of it out there that had online support. That version then got used to create "hacks" you could use online, but you'd have to pay for them. That's what bugged Take2, other people making money with their content.

 

What I don't get though, most game companies ignore that, because cheaters usually rake in more money than normal gamers. I mean a normal person like you and me propably buys the game once, a cheater however as much times as he finds fun in cheating. I knew a guy who spent most of his money on Battlefield 2 and hacks for it... 

 

I still think they also wanted to get rid of mods. The only thing that would convince me otherwise would be if the made and supported a mod tool themselves.

[roadworx]

i've always found it weird why there's devs out there who actively try to prevent modding. i mean, honestly, it creates longevity for your game, why try to shut it down?

 

welp...time to go back to playing gta san andreas i guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[scalliano]

https://pvplive.net/c/gta-5-rockstar-gets-take-two-to-back-off-on-openiv

 

The people have spoken, it seems. Whilst this appears positive, I don't buy for a second the conept of R* positioning themselvces as the good guys. They and T2 have a lot of sucking up to the community to do to get back in the good books.