It was an outright lie to shut down the modding community by killing the most essential tool that millions are required to use to install single-player modifications. In 2017, a popular modding tool OpenIV was sent a cease-and-desist letter demanding the software developers to cease the program – Take-Two falsely claimed OpenIV had interfered and allowed people to cheat in GTA Online but had before Take-Two tried to take down the tool OpenIV already made extra steps to ensure players were not able to access GTA Online whilst the game files were modified. Both companies have tried to take down third-party tools that enable players to modify the game files.

Rockstar GamesĪlmost 16 years later, Rockstar and Take-Two are still immensely against modding their games to this very day.

Hackers created the ‘Hot Coffee’ modification by disassembling and then combining, recompiling and altering the game’s source code. Rockstar alleged it was a third-party modification and had nothing to do with Rockstar – but that was far from the case and had resulted in a major investigation from Entertainment Software Rating Board (also known as ESRB). As it originally made headlines worldwide, Rockstar Games tried to push the blame to Patrick Wildenborg, who originally learned the cut feature in 2005 and made the mod public on popular modding website GTAGarage. I am sure you are well aware of the events surrounding it as it made headlines for years and still does in 2021. Let’s go way back into the early 2000s when Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas officially shipped out to millions of Rockstar fans, in 2004, one of Rockstar’s biggest scandals was the discovery of Hot Coffee lying behind the game files.

This article also provides an overview of what has occurred over the last two decades and the rather sudden about-face that has occurred in tolerance towards modding. This article contains exclusive interviews with established mod developers, whose creations have been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times, in order to get their views on the current stance of Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive. We have a lot to uncover, but hope that this article expands the voices of the modding community to a much broader audience.

Gta single player mods