The question is when Take-Two and Rockstar will take action against Grand Theft Auto mods, because mods are not looked upon favourably these days…

Last year, we heard that Grand Theft Auto III received an unofficial Nintendo Switch port. Seeing it, it was only a question of time when Grand Theft Auto: Vice City would follow (and now, when Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas drops on the big N’s hybrid platform). Now, the time has come: Vice City’s port is here…

You can see in this video how you can get it running, but we have to emphasise the fact that you will need a modded Nintendo Switch to get it running. The team itself managed to make the two aforementioned Grand Theft Auto games running on the Switch by reverse-engineering the source code for each title. We will not provide further steps on how to modify your console, however.

We wonder when Rockstar and Take-Two will try to wipe the ports off the Internet, though, as recently, they have been stepping their game up against the ports. For example, there’s 2005’s Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City, which moved GTA III’s environment over to Vice City’s engine. It’s no longer available on ModDB, as it got deleted. Vice Cry, which increased the textures and models’ resolution by using higher-rez models, also got the wipe.

Then, there’s GTA: Underground, which not only imported maps from other Grand Theft Auto games but also other Rockstar titles, such as Bully and the two Manhunt games, plus offering gang wars also got scrubbed (turns out, the reason was a DMCA claim…). The same goes for the unofficial PC „ports” of Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories. GTAForums has kept track of the removals, and they also pointed out Rockstar’s statement from 2017 over the OpenIV modding tool. It got silently updated in 2019…

And this update shows that the mods are not protected if either the „use or importation of other IP (including other Rockstar IP) in the project” or „making new games, stories, missions, or maps” happen in the mods. Unless Take-Two is making updated re-releases for Grand Theft Auto III/Vice City/San Andreas, then we’d say it makes sense to wipe mods. If not… these are at least sixteen-year-old games.

Source: WCCFTech, PCGamer