Take-Two Shuts Down GTA Fan Remake and GTA IV Mods

So now that the Grand Theft Auto Trilogy “Definitive” Edition is out, fans are probably wondering whether they can expect remasters of other entries in the GTA series or not. Well, Take Two might have accidentally let the ball drop on this one by doing what they do best: Shutting down and laughing at the face of all the hard work done by the fans of the series for the past decade. 

Only recently, Take-Two has tried to one-up their name by actually taking down THREE mods away from the community with DMCA strikes.  One of which was a fan project aimed to remake the 2004 “Grand Theft Auto Advance”, a 2D GTA game for the Game Boy Advance, in Grand Theft Auto 3.

The other two mods however are what’s interesting, both mods actually belong to Grand Theft Auto IV. One of the mods is “The Lost and Damned Unlocked for GTA 4” that replaces the model for Niko Bellic with Johnny Klebitz, who was the protagonist of The Lost and Dammed expansion pack, the mod also brings the UI and outfits to the base game. 

The other removed “mod” is even more weird, its a publicly available save file for Grand Theft Auto IV The Lost and Damned with 65% Story completion. 

These DMCA strikes probably wouldn’t mean much if Take Two hadn’t done the same thing before with the Grand Theft Auto Trilogy Remasters, before announcing the Definitive Collection, Take-Two went on a savage killing spree by DMCA striking as many GTA 3, Vice City and San Andreas mods as they could. Another proof that this might be a potential GTA IV remaster is that various insiders have speculated that one is actually in the works. 

Grand Theft Auto IV is personally one of the most underrated in the entries in the series for me, while the game received a high amount of praise from critics, nostalgia for the PS2 games and the modernization brought by GTA V has seemingly left GTA IV to be mostly forgotten by many, despite having what is probably the best story and the best protagonist in the entire Grand Theft Auto series. 

Its hard to be excited for anything about a remaster considering the approach that Take-Two has decided to take in order to boost their profits. Though one silver lining we can at least derive from this is that this might eventually pave the way for a Red Dead Redemption remaster.