Rockstar tells Take-Two to leave modders alone

[daze23]

Rockstar Games Talks Publisher Into Leaving 'Grand Theft Auto V' Modders Alone

Rockstar says that it's in contact with OpenIV's developer and intends to resolve the issue.

Last week Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two Interactive pissed off thousands of Grand Theft Auto V players when it sent a cease-and desist letter to Yuriy "Good-NDS" Krivoruchko, the developer of OpenIV, a popular Grand Theft Auto V modding tool.

Many players took the action as an attack on the very idea of modding, particularly since OpenIV has served as a development tool and library for modders of the PC versions of GTA games for the better part of a decade. The response from the GTA V player community was quick and uproarious, with many of them flooding the game's Steam page with negative reviews, almost 80,000 signatures to a Change.org petition to save OpenIV, and hundreds of outraged posts on various gaming forums.

Now, however, GTA V's developer Rockstar Games seems to have moderated Take-Two's position, and has also told Motherboard that it is in contact with Krivoruchko with the intention of resolving the issue.

"Rockstar Games believes in reasonable fan creativity, and, in particular, wants creators to showcase their passion for our games," Rockstar said in a statement on its website. "After discussions with Take-Two, Take-Two has agreed that it generally will not take legal action against third-party projects involving Rockstar's PC games that are single-player, non-commercial, and respect the intellectual property (IP) rights of third parties. This does not apply to (i) multiplayer or online services; (ii) tools, files, libraries, or functions that could be used to impact multiplayer or online services, or (iii) use or importation of other IP (including other Rockstar IP) in the project."

The second (ii) stipulation here is where things get complicated. The whole reason OpenIV is so popular in the modding community is that it allows users to decrypt, read, and edit the game's proprietary file format. That's what makes-single player modding possible. The issue is that some users have taken advantage of this ability to tinker with GTA Online, ruining the experience for other players by cheating.

Earlier this week Krivoruchko told Motherboard that he never designed OpenIV for this purpose. He said that he's not interested in GTA Online at all. But he did concede that it is possible that some modders have used OpenIV to impact GTA Online. At Krivoruchko's request, Motherboard is not detailing the methods he discussed so as not to cause more trouble in GTA Online.

As Rockstar's statement says, Take-Two now intends to only go after mods that affect GTA Online, but at the moment it is still not clear how OpenIV can continue to allow users to modify the single player experience without facilitating cheating. Rockstar said it's in contact with Krivoruchko in order to figure that out, and judging by the statement, for now Take-Two will prioritize going after mods that ruin GTA Online.

GTA modding tool OpenIV receives an update, signaling development will continue | PC Gamer

GTA modding tool OpenIV released a small update today, from build 906 to build 907 of version 2.9. The update contains "bug fixes and small improvements", which during any other week wouldn't necessarily be cause for celebration. However, considering the recent announcement that OpenIV was ceasing development and updates in the wake of the takedown notice from Take-Two Interactive, even a minor update is a huge deal.

This morning, along with a new statement about its stance on singleplayer modding, Rockstar told PC Gamer that it was talking to the lead developer of OpenIV. It certainly sounds like that conversation went well and it appears that OpenIV will be continuing development, which also suggests Take-Two has dropped its legal challenge against OpenIV.

Another easy dot to connect: this turnaround is due to the massive protest by fans and modders, which included a swarm of negative Steam reviews and a petition with thousands of signatures. The players talked, and Rockstar and Take-Two listened. Good job, everyone!

As of right now, OpenIV's website hasn't been changed to reflect the good news—it still displays the original post about the takedown—but we expect a statement from OpenIV's developer soon.

 

[Zebruh]

Was wondering what the deal was with Take Two, and as a fan of GTA RP, I was anxious to see how far this would actually end up going. Good to know Rockstar is supportive of the idea of modding singe player.

 

[Sensitive Blake Griffin]

Rockstar the gawds

 

[Anti-Anime]

I wanted to see more steam neck beards post emotionally painful teary eyed reviews

 

[Tunez]

Take two has to obey

 

[Brandeezy]

Was wondering what the deal was with Take Two, and as a fan of GTA RP, I was anxious to see how far this would actually end up going. Good to know Rockstar is supportive of the idea of modding singe player.

Same shyt with Sony and console Mods involving scripting

 

[Grand Conde]

Rockstar the gawds

Yep.













Dont Rockstar treat their employees like absolute shyt?

 

[Spiritual Stratocaster]

Yep.













Dont Rockstar treat their employees like absolute shyt?

I think that was the case with LA NOIR...I remember some shyt about the crew of that project being overworked.

 

[daze23]

Dont Rockstar treat their employees like absolute shyt?

it's my understanding that long hours and crunch time is pretty standard in all AAA studios

 

[Liquid]

it's my understanding that long hours and crunch time is pretty standard in all AAA studios

Yeah, it's commonplace because of deadlines. Devastated make it a point to live extremely close to where they work because 2-3 hours commuting takes up too much valuable time over the course of a year.

Look up the going rates for places near digipen

 

[Grand Conde]

it's my understanding that long hours and crunch time is pretty standard in all AAA studios

Pretty sure "it happens everywhere" isn't a legit excuse for appalling labour standards. And Rockstar are supposed to be the absolute worst.

 

[daze23]

Pretty sure "it happens everywhere" isn't a legit excuse for appalling labour standards. And Rockstar are supposed to be the absolute worst.

as long as they're not violating any labor laws

it's not a career for everyone. but dudes in the neogaf thread were saying that Rockstar basically tells people how it's gonna be

NeoGAF

I worked in the AAA game industry for a decade. I know plenty of people that either currently work at Rockstar San Diego or have in the past.

If Rockstar San Diego wants to interview you to work at their studio, they straight up tell you they work a minimum of 60 hours per week on a normal schedule with massive crunch during the last year of development. Which is a lot better than basically every other AAA studio which pretends they don't work massive crunch, but they all do. I am not aware of a single AAA development studio that does not work 80 hours per week for the last 6+ months of developing a AAA game.

People willingly sign on to work at Rockstar San Diego knowing they are walking into an endless crunch situation. Most do it because they have decided having a prestigious title like RDR2 on your resume is worth the personal cost.

The "games as a service" games typically require their development teams to work 60 hours per week as the norm with extra hours required for a big patch/update.

There is literally no point to boycott RDR2 over any other AAA game.

Every single developer in the AAA industry knows that working massive crunch is a part of being in the AAA industry. I'm not excusing the shyt business practice of crunch, but it is what it is right now and singling Rockstar San Diego out of the bunch is stupid.

Change in working conditions for game developers is not going to come from profit/loss sheets. In fact, any time a studio/publisher suffers a loss it always ends up in layoffs for some employees and the studio then makes the remaining employees even harder and longer to try and make up for the loss.

The only way there will ever be any change in the industry is through laws being passed the penalize studios PLUS workers at said studios willing to report their employer to a government regulatory body.

As an aside, the people working on games are by and large young single people right out of college, with senior positions filled by the "true believers". Almost everybody working at a game studio regularly works voluntary overtime just because they are trying to make the game better. So there's a lot of pressure to work extra time from a cultural standpoint as well as an "employer mandated" standpoint.