GTA V just won’t stop getting hate from the audience in light of Take-Two’s decision to shut down OpenIV. But since then, it has gotten worse as the recent reviews of the game have dropped to “overwhelmingly negative. This has, in turn, resulted in the overall reviews of the game to change to “mixed”.
There has been a huge uproar within the PC community for Grand Theft Auto V after Take-Two took initiative to take down OpenIV, the main modding tool for the game. A lot of the audience was angered at Take-Two for this step and were claiming to not support them in any way in the future.
“For 10 years now the Grand Theft Auto series has been edited and modded by people to make the game more enjoyable. Hundreds if not thousands of people have bought one or all of Grand Theft Auto: SA, Grand Theft Auto IV, and Grand Theft Auto V just to mod it. The modding of these games have been done mostly in singleplayer and with the help of OpenIV, a software that lets you get into the game’s files and replace vehicles, scripts, textures, etc. The closing of OpenIV leaves 10,000s of people without access to be able to mod their games, and leaves 10,000s of people without the ability to continue their hobbies. All modding used by OpenIV is for singleplayer use only to make the game more enjoyable, the software OpenIV was never used to mod multiplayer or Grand Theft Auto Online so it does not harm anyone.”, this was the excerpt from the petition on change.org to make sure that OpenIV lives.
The petition has gained massive support from the community and it has reached almost 75K supporters for the cause. The goal is to change Take-Two’s decision to close down OpenIV and it seems that Rockstar is taking steps to make sure that the community get’s what they want.
It seemed to work as recently developers Rockstar held discussions with Take Two regarding the issue , and the following statement was then issued.
“After discussions with Take-Two, Take-Two has agreed that it generally will not take legal action against third-party projects involving Rockstar’s PC games that are single-player, non-commercial, and respect the intellectual property (IP) rights of third parties. This does not apply to (i) multiplayer or online services; (ii) tools, files, libraries, or functions that could be used to impact multiplayer or online services, or (iii) use or importation of other IP (including other Rockstar IP) in the project.”
However complications continue to exist due to the fact that it is this very tinkering with the in game files which allows for modding to take place and is the reason for OpenIV’s immense popularity. Hence the negative reviews still seem to pour in as you can see in the image below.
Although the backlash has resulted in Take Two taking a step back this saga seems far from over , and it will be interesting to see how it unfolds in the future.
