Former GTA dev weighs in on Rockstar's attempt to silence Vice City mod that ports the whole game to GTA 4: "This is what companies are supposed to do"

Take-Two recently took down the YouTube channel of a group of GTA 4 modders porting Grand Theft Auto: Vice City into the game, and a former developer from Rockstar Games has weighed in on the situation.

Last week, the YouTube channel that was sharing videos about Vice City: Nextgen Edition was taken down. This is a mod project that aims to port GTA: Vice City into the engine of GTA 4.

While the YouTube channel is gone, the mod itself remains available, as the modders are based in Russia where Rockstar doesn't have an easy legal route to stop them.

Ex-Rockstar developer Obbe Vermeij says: "Take2/R* are a commercial company. They will take down mods that interfere with their business interests. The VC NextGen Edition mod for GTA 4 directly competes with the Definitive Edition."

Vermeij used to run a blog about his time at the company before he was told it was upsetting some of the company's devs and stopped posting on it, so he's all too familiar with how protective Take-Two is of its IP.

He continues: "The Liberty City preservation project (GTA 4 in GTA 5 engine) would interfere with a possible GTA 4 remaster. (No idea whether they're working on that. I think they should). There's no point getting angry about it. This is what companies are supposed to do."

"The best we can hope for is that they allow mods that don't interfere with their business. Such as DCA3 (GTA 3 for Dreamcast). Afaik they have recently been decent about letting these projects continue."

The Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – Definitive Edition package of remasters was not well-received when it launched in 2021.

There were bugs in all three games (GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas), and Rockstar even apologized for the state of the game. Vermeij acknowledges this. Takedowns like this "would be easier to swallow if they produced competent re-masters," he tweets.

Ironically, it seems this move from Take-Two could actually lose it money. In a statement released in the description of a video on a new YouTube channel, the modders behind GTA: Vice City Nextgen Edition write:

"Initially, the modification was planned to require the original game in order to show respect to the publisher. However, over the past two days, we have completely rebuilt the project, and it is now available as a standalone 'installation-ready package'. Just download, install, and play."

"There are no issues with version compatibility since the mod is now fully autonomous. In light of the current uncertainties, we had to make this change to ensure the mod's stable performance for the widest possible audience."

We're not going to share a link to that video, because it contains a link to the mod and we don't want Rockstar's lawyers coming after us next.

Vermeij says Rockstar and Take-Two are just doing "what companies are supposed to do."

But while Nintendo is also very protective of its IP, Bethesda seems to let almost any mod project go on. People are trying to port all of Tamriel into the Morrowind engine and Bethesda hasn't put a stop to that... not yet, at any rate.

In the meantime, some players seem to be loving what the Nextgen Edition is offering.

Over on Twitter one account writes: "It's an incredible fan project that carries Vice City over into the RAGE engine and it's genuinely amazing how well this thing plays."

Another writes: "GTA Vice City Next Gen Edition is pretty crazy. Seeing GTAVC run in real-time on top of the GTA 4 engine with all its cars, NPCs and even missions included is what The Definitive Edition should have been. Modders truly are incredible."

It remains to be seen what, if anything, will change here – particularly as Rockstar continues charging forward towards GTA 6, which is still set for release in Fall 2025.

Still, either way, it's likely that we'll see more intervention from developers into the modding scene as publishers work to protect their assets in a somewhat volatile marketplace.

While you're here, check out our ranking of the best GTA games. I'm starting to get a new appreciation for GTA 4, but San Andreas will always be my favorite.