Take-Two wants to take the fans to court over reverse engineering two of the Grand Theft Auto games.

These developers reverse-engineered the source code of Grand Theft Auto III (resulting in Re3) and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (ReVC). The reverse-engineered code could be helpful for modding, allowing the devs to know the code inside and outside for the two GTA games that launched two decades ago, allowing them to find their respective boundaries.

But Take-Two doesn’t like these projects at all, filing a lawsuit, claiming the modders have violated the end-user license agreement (EULA) of the company: “Defendants’ conduct is knowing, willful, and deliberate. Defendants are well aware that they do not possess the right to copy, adapt, or distribute derivative GTA source code or the audiovisual elements of the Games and that doing so constitutes copyright infringement.

Defendant Angelo Papenhoff publicly stated that he was “very much worried” about TakeTwo’s discovery of the re3 and reVC projects. And, when Take-Two attempted to remove Defendants’ infringing source code from the Internet, at least three Defendants (acting in at least one instance with other Defendants’ participation and direction) knowingly filed bad faith counter-notifications that materially misrepresented the legality of their content, apparently claiming that because they allegedly “reverse engineered” the Games’ source code, they somehow cannot be liable for copyright infringement.

Yet while making this claim, Defendants also have bragged that their derivative versions of the Games are functionally and visually identical to the originals and have even suggested they be used for unauthorized “modding purposes.” As such, Defendants’ software infringes Take-Two’s exclusive rights to copy, adapt, and distribute the Games,” the court document reads.

The code was reinstated on Github after the initial DMCA claim by Take-Two, which makes itself fall onto the same level as Blizzard and Nintendo. Why not just HIRE these people for having such dedication and passion about these two games to work for the company? These efforts should be recognized.

Source: WCCFTech