The GTA 5 Liberty City Preservation Project (LCPP) was released this month after six years of work, recreating GTA 4's unforgettable Liberty City within GTA 5's game world. This was a seriously impressive piece of work, managing to bring over the entirety of Rockstar's skewed New York and show it all off with GTA 5's improved visuals and audio: It even arrived with Steam Deck compatibility.
The joy was, however, short lived. As is now something of a tradition, the mod gained some traction, was covered by the traditional media and spread rapidly on forums and social sites. And then The Man at Rockstar HQ noticed.
The Man doesn't like GTA mods, especially in this the year of our lord GTA 6, and Take-Two has a long history of going after mod makers whose projects get a little too close for comfort (there have been rumours of an official GTA 4 remaster for a while now).
The modding team behind LCPP has now taken down the mod, and the following was posted on the project's Discord:
"Due to the unexpected attention that our project received and after speaking with Rockstar Games, we have decided to take down the Liberty City Preservation project," says a post from modder NK Jellman. "We appreciate all the support that the project has received, and we look forward to continuing to pursue our passion for modding the Grand Theft Auto series."
The message has thus far been greeted with 668 emojis of Niko Bellic, GTA 4's protagonist, crying at the news. Angrier reactions are also easy to find, with players frustrated at Rockstar (or "L-Star" as some have taken to calling it) obliterating yet another community project that didn't seem to be doing anyone any harm, and was distributed free of charge.
"We've noticed a lot of misconceptions and theories surrounding our latest announcement and would like to make a few things clear," added NK Jellman in a later Discord post. "This isn’t a DMCA, rather a friendly takedown, mutually agreed upon by all parties involved. There is no negativity between us and Rockstar Games / Take-Two Interactive."
Hmm. The Discord server remains active, though will no longer host any LCPP download links, and the team recommends against downloading from unofficial sources due to the risk of malware.
Well chalk another one up to the Take Two lawyers. GTA has had an extensive and complicated history with modding, but generally the rule seems to be that when you get a little too close to the official products, Rockstar steps in. This isn't even the first GTA 4 "remaster" project to be shut down, and the company seems especially invested in playing legal whack-a-mole with mods that try to polish-up the older games (then of course dropped the highly janky but official GTA Trilogy, great job). With GTA 6 still due for release this year, don't expect that stance to be changing anytime soon.
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