Take-Two backs down. (Update on the GTA V modding situation)

I think it's important to know whether it was successful. Companies will continue doing this.
Maybe in Take-Two's case, it's more obvious since they themselves recently said that they're under-monetizing their customers, so losing sales was just too much for them?
But if this doesn't work, then it's important to know because next time things might not work out as well.

Nothing shitty about confronting greedy corporate scum.

I wouldn'ty call it bad way per se, maybe some of the people who partook in it did it the "bad way" like leaving negative reviews without valid criticism like "Fuck you Take Two!", but in my opinion in itself leaving bad reviews because of mod banning is a valid reason. Reviews are in place for critic purposes. Removing modding ability from the game that vastly depends on mods is something that's worth criticizing, especially as it lowers the play-value of the game itself. As it is a valid reason for criticising it is a valid reason to post review about it. So I believe all negative reviews adressing mod banning were valid ones ands there was nothing bad about people posting them.

Problem with Steam is they have only binary system for reviews - your review is either Positive or Negative. You cannot give scores etc. In ideal world after TT actions valid response would be accordingly update reviews and scores. You gave game 7/10, but after some changes introduced you believe it's now worse than in moment you reviewed it, you adress these changes and for example update your score to 5/10. You still hurt them, it's still noticable, buit like I said - in binary system it';s not possible and even if you updated your review without changing a score any change would not be noticable. But still no matter scores - as long as someone gives any valid criticism, even the slightest, in their review I see it as valid one and nothing bad with it. Like neg reviews at launch of NMS because game didn't freaking worked for days (weeks for some AMD users) - doesn't matter that even when it started to work it turned oput be mediocre at best, what matters is that same argument "it's not good way to sort things out, you cannot review game you couldn't launch" was used. Game nopt launching is a valid point for criticism, and even if your review focus only on that it's still valid one. Same here - game no longer supporting mods is a valid point ;p

The funny thing for me is that the statement pretty much says that it's Rockstar that stopped it.

Nah, couldn't have been the reviews being bombed and the possibility of sales dropping. Nah... Nah....

Judging From their unprepared statements, Rockstar were not informed prior or had little say on the matter of Take 2 removing the mod community.

" a lawyer on reddit " lul.

For one, I do kind of agree with antiHiko, but they removed the C&D. So, they most definitely backed down. The question just is how much they actually backed down.

To me it doesn't seem like something that could count as "money lost". They maybe lost a few potential sales, maybe some players stopped playing the game (and if they were SP only players for mods it doesn't really matter tbh) but that's about it. They've already made a ton of money from the people that have bought the game until now, nothing much has changed in terms of consoles which I believe is probably their bigger market. I think the whole thing was because they wanted to move people from playing SP to MP so that they would buy those $ cards to make them some extra profit. Really they would have done better if they improved the current situation with hackers and possibly add some more content to the SP in the form of dlc/expansion even if it's a paid one.

I think they looked to the future a bit more. There's a huge amount of people that buy GTA V on PC purely because of the mods. Or that as the major reason.
As you yourself are saying, GTA sells so well right now. How many of them are mod users? This situation has been going on for a week or so, it's hard to see an effect just yet.

Also, this includes future games as well.

If you had bothered to visit the group announcements and forums you would see alot of people who claim that they wanted to get this game, yes, even today, many more said to have wanted to get this game JUST for the mods, other people being said that there's no point in getting this game on the of if you can't use mods. As old as it is, it's in the top game charts among DotA 2 and CSGO and such, it would keep selling, no matter how old it is right now and in the future, it will keep selling. And it's still 60 euros too.

That's the cost of us fighting for our rights.

I'm baffled at how they didn't realize this....Probably never used a mod in their life.

Lack of grammar makes me recall something

Here

I don't always get your gifs but somehow I've missed them. Welcome back, even if it's late

Exactly! Have those people even made a game? Was it as good as GTA V? If not, then they have no right to complain!!!!!

+1

"Everybody who did leave negative rate only because of OpenIV should now simply remove it"
...But why? Does the past few weeks no longer exist? Did it not happen? I mean, I understand why you'd think the reviews should be removed (and they will be for the most part), but I personally wouldn't forgive someone/something that screwed up so bad. At least not so easily. They didn't stop doing it because they understood their mistakes. They stopped because of the backlash.

If I were to smack you a few times and you hit me back and I stopped because of it, would you just say "Well, you're no longer hitting me, so everything's back to where it was"?
If the answer is yes, then you're either a bigger man than me or just naive. We can't tell yet. We'll see how it turns out.

I just think that inflicting a wound (in this case, sending a C&D to OpenIV) could and even should have a scar. I wouldn't blame people who wanted to keep their negative reviews and I would even encourage those who are thinking of keeping that review. Let them not forget what they did.

Very true, except the part about new players who would understand the reviews, I mean they do understand them, but they won't buy the game because of this even if they want to play online or vanilla single player, I've seen alot of people stating this and more when this went down, from thousands of new constant game purchasers, to none.

Eh, never really aimed to be neutral on it. I personally find what they did disgusting and extremely anti-consumer.

But, we've been over this already and it was a nice chat :)

Actually people should remove the current negative reviews. They will eventually become less relevant and buried over time. Instead take them down and wait for the publisher to do something stupid again and leave all new fresh negative reviews.

Rockstar seemed genuinely unhappy with what Take2 were doing when they forced the takedown of OpenIV, and have in the past said good things about OpenIV and the things you can do with it. The developers openly endorsed modding and have said that they want people to mod their game, even going so far as to feature OpenIV enabled mods on their website.
So yeah, in this particular case, Rockstar seem to have been the good guys all along.

I personally fall into the category of "I think that Take-Two and Rockstar both supported the idea, but had the PR work in a way that had Rockstar save as much face as possible by sounding disappointed, yet also supportive". And now, of course, Rockstar looks like the heroes of modding, coming in and slaying the evil dragon. This whole thing looks like a massive PR win for Rockstar.

I still hate Overkill for their Crimefest drama, so I won't be forgiving those two companies either. (not any time soon at least)

I personally won't blacklist you. But I'd say that you also are wrong.

Most hacks don't require OpenIV. The most popular ones at least. OpenIV doesn't even support going online. In most cases, it just won't let you. Plus, having it rely on OpenIV would be a huge design flaw. Why would someone rely on a program that will try and stop what you're doing?

The main issue, from what I learned from a user on this site, was that some updates were being leaked. As to the hacking itself, it doesn't even matter if it was because of OpenIV (it isn't, by the way.). Rockstar endorsed and wholeheartedly supported OpenIV. They showcased mods that used OpenIV and they also said that it's an amazing tool. They could've worked with the community if there was anything to work on.

They went after the modding tool that destroys around 60% of all mods on GTA 4 and 5. It also destroys anything that's even remotely complicated. Now, all you'd have would be trainers and reskins.

Hacking's a massive issue in GTA Online, but they're going after the wrong guy. It's like jailing the gun salesman because a criminal might use a gun.
Same goes with this. Modding tools get shut down because someone might use that tool. They won't though.

Take-Two needs to actually do something about that problem. Just because there are car crashes, doesn't mean that all roads should be destroyed.

Do you know why there are so many hackers/modders, did you know there is pretty much no anti cheat on GTAO , it doesnt even have dedicated servers

Yeah, but how much can you mod without it? OpenIV is the equivalent of SKSE for Skyrim.

You can mod without it, but anything more complicated is relatively impossible.