A month after the GTA 5 mod recreating GTA 4 was shut down, its modders are now "uncertain if this takedown request is genuine"

GTA 5's ambitious Liberty City Preservation Project mod, which brought a fully functional recreation of GTA 4's Liberty City to life within its own sequel, was shut down last month, but the team behind it are now "uncertain" if the takedown request was legitimate following "revelations" about a different GTA 5 mod and the team behind it.

In the last day, an enormous 73,000-word essay about GTA 5 multiplayer mod FiveM and the drama behind the scenes of its development has surfaced online, full of allegations of wrongdoing by certain parties. Cfx.re, the team behind the mod, was acquired by Rockstar Games back in 2023, although this essay alleges that none of the original FiveM developers are still on the team now.

Amongst many, many other things, the essay claims that "the LCPP takedown request came from within FiveM," and that "some strangers who for whatever reason represented themselves as 'FiveM team members'" participated in its takedown. Furthermore, it states that the original FiveM team "wouldn't ever participate in snitching," and points out that FiveM itself is home to "dozens of Liberty City servers, which are streaming the entire map." This is despite the fact that the team previously stated that players could not "import the map from GTA 4, Red Dead Redemption, or other games" into their servers, adding: "We do not support combining IP or assets from other games into FiveM and RedM, regardless of whether developed by Rockstar or someone else."

The writers behind this new essay (who, it should be noted, don't seem to be original members of the FiveM team, but passionate members of the community) speculate that the reason these Liberty City servers aren't getting taken down is "probably because they're making money off of it," although this allegation isn't evidenced.

Regardless, World Travel, the team behind the Liberty City Preservation Project, has now responded with a statement, detailing the interactions with a "very professional" Rockstar representative who asked for links to the mod to be taken down "because the legal team had an issue with it." Last month, World Travel clarified that "this isn't a DMCA, rather a friendly takedown," and they now state that there were multiple "back and forth emails" and a couple of Zoom meetings about "how we could work together in the future," but "the contact from Rockstar became unresponsive in this area."

Furthermore, the World Travel team later "became aware that one of the paid Liberty City mods suddenly had GTA 4 props, custom scenarios, bug fixes, fixed up interiors, animated signs, subway and tunnel lighting, fixed traffic paths, etc." They thought that this was "a very strange coincidence considering these mods have always replaced the props with GTA 5 props," and decided to email a link to it to the Rockstar contact they'd been in touch with before.

"He told me that he forwarded it to their enforcement teams (though I now have my doubts about that)," the statement continues. "Currently, these expensive Liberty City mods (some of which sell for prices of around 500 Euros) are still up."

Furthermore, the statement suggests that claims which were made in the FiveM essay appear to be "correct." They continue: "I don't want to get into speculation, but it wouldn't be surprising if someone is getting a slice of the pie. Due to these revelations, we are uncertain if this takedown request is genuine."

Could this mean that the Liberty City Preservation Project could return, then? That much isn't clear – after all, there's no confirmation at this point that the takedown request was false. We'll just have to watch this space – at the time of writing, Rockstar hasn't publicly acknowledged the FiveM essay in any way.

The years-long GTA 6 debate over what happens to GTA Online has been addressed by Take-Two's CEO: "We've shown a willingness to support legacy titles when a community wants to be engaged with them."