Liberty City Mod for GTA 5 Canned After Modding Tool Controversy

Even though OpenIV was acquitted in the recent Take Two witchhunt against user created content, there was an innocent victim caught in the crossfire. Liberty City for GTA5 was supposed to bring the map used in several previous games into the latest one, but it has now been cancelled, cut down in its prime.

In a recent post on the GTAForums, the team behind OpenIV decided to address the elephant in the room:

Unfortunately, our highly anticipated mod “Liberty City in GTA V” will not be released because it clearly contradicts with Rockstar modding policy. Liberty City mod is a big loss for us, since it was a huge part of our motivation to push OpenIV functionality.

They’re in a bit of a pickle, you see. As they say, adding the Liberty City map to GTA 5 was much of what drove them to create the splendid mod tool, which is today used by an entire community to build wonderful things. They’re currently “revising” their plans for the future, and it wouldn’t be much of a surprise if they decided to leave the hostile scene Take Two has created, and search for greener pastures.

The mod had to be put down because it broke one of Rockstar’s newly minted Three Cardinal Rules of Modding – it enriched the game with IP not from the game itself. Why this is a problem is beyond us. You could argue they don’t want legal disputes over other people’s IP in their game, but nobody gave Bethesda any flak for Star Trek costumes in every TES game ever. Even so, Liberty City is their property, which makes the move even more baffling. It all seems petty and spiteful, and probably stems from the fact that someone high up the food chain is completely divorced from reality.