Rockstar bans an ambitious fan project for GTA 5, thereby destroying 6 years of work

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A mod for GTA 5 was released just a few weeks ago and has already been banned again by Rockstar Games. This not only shattered the wishes of many fans, but also ruined years of work.

What kind of mod is this? It’s called the Liberty City Preservation Project and comes from a team of GTA fans who have been working on it for several years. Specifically, work on the mod began in 2018 – around six years ago.

This is an extensive mod that, as the name suggests, incorporates Liberty City into GTA 5. The city from the fourth part differs in some ways from Los Santos from GTA 5.

While the latter is based on sunny Los Angeles, Rockstar’s Liberty City is clearly based on New York. Accordingly, everything is a bit grayer and less optimistic. If you wanted to have this slightly different atmosphere in GTA 5, you could achieve it with the new mod.

It offered the entire map of Liberty City, including pedestrians, traffic and various weather scenarios. There were also some improvements to lighting and textures.

But now the fun is over, because the mod has been officially banned by Rockstar. And that despite the fact that the successor GTA 6 is supposed to do a lot more when it comes to mod support.

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A bitter rejection

What does the modding team say? The mod developer nkjellman spoke up on Discord. He announces the end of the project and explains it as follows:

Due to the unexpected attention our project has received and after consultation with Rockstar Games, we have decided to discontinue the Liberty City Preservation project. We thank you for all the support the project has received and look forward to continuing our passion for modding the Grand Theft Auto series.

nkjellman via discord.com

It sounds as if the end of the mod was decided in a joint conversation. However, because fans of the project on Discord and Reddit are skeptical and believe that Rockstar simply recklessly took the mod offline, nkjellman emphasized:

This is not a DMCA (copyright infringement), but a friendly takedown mutually agreed upon by all parties involved. There is no negativity between us and Rockstar Games / Take-Two Interactive.

nkjellman via discord.com

From now on it is forbidden to share active download links to mods on the Discord server. The modder also advises against using unofficial links to play the mod.

What does the community say? Some players on Reddit are not surprised by the action. After all, it also happened in the past.

  • “Yes, it was clear that this was going to happen… lesson? Stop using mods with copyrighted intellectual property on a large scale. Work on them, post them online when they’re finished and disappear,” suggests Lef4DayZGone.
  • oOkukukachuOo agrees: “Moral of the story: Stop giving these projects so much media attention. That’s not good for her. Leave it underground where it belongs until it comes to market.”
  • “Or better yet, stop wasting your time on a product that a company has abandoned because they will never appreciate your effort,” writes Envy661.

    • Another mod project is Skyblivion, which aims to remake Oblivion in the Skyrim engine. Here too, however, there are concerns as to whether Bethesda might intervene soon. Because it cannot be ruled out that an official remake will be announced soon: 1 year ago, documents confirmed the new edition for one of the best RPGs of all time – Insider reveals what will be improved

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