A project to reverse-engineer Grand Theft Auto 3 and Vice City has been removed. The supporters behind the venture were served with a DMCA notice from Rockstar parent company Take Two.
As reported by Eurogamer, the team that rebuilt the source code for both open world games and put it online for players and fans received a removal this week. The document, which can be viewed on GitHub, claims that it comes from someone at Take-Two, who says that this work is “by no means licensed” and that “the best and only solution is to completely remove the above pages”, next to a list of files to delete.
GitHub apparently took down these files immediately, although the project management is not sure if they are from Take-Two, they feel it’s better to assume they’re genuine. ‘ The project, re3 and reVC – reverse-engineered GTA 3 and reverse-engineered Vice City respectively – meant that modders and developers could change, fix and change the crime games in a previously unforeseen way and generally better and more could make user-friendly. Load screens have been removed or reduced, controller compatibility has been improved, widescreen support and more are some of the features implemented thanks to these new versions.
Ports were underway for other systems and other improvements such as beam tracking. Using re3 and reVC, you had to own both games, and the intention was for educational and muddy use. “We do not encourage piracy or commercial use,” reads an indemnity, but it is obviously not much protection if the author does not approve it.
Check out a display window below:
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, a 2005 PSP spin, was next in line for treatment, but whether that’s going to happen is up for grabs. As for GTA 5, it continues to shift the copies in tons, and it still does figures on Twitch.