Summary
- An ambitious project that sought to bring GTA 4’s map to GTA 5 has been taken down after conversations with Rockstar.
- The team said that there is “no bad blood”, but did not explain why the mod was unpublished.
Earlier this month, the ambitious project to bring the entirety of Grand Theft Auto 4’s map (ie Liberty City) to GTA 5 finally launched. However, Rockstar has already taken it down.
“Due to the unexpected attention that our project received and after speaking with Rockstar Games, we have decided to take down the Liberty City Preservation project”, nkjellman announced (as reported by Insider Gaming).
There is no bad blood between World Travel and Rockstar/Take-Two.
“We appreciate all the support the project has received, and we look forward to continuing to pursue our passion for modding the Grand Theft Auto series.”
Why Was The Liberty City Preservation Project Taken Down?
It’s unclear what was said between the modding team and Rockstar, or what the actual reasons for the project being taken down were, but speculation varies from it using NPCs, vehicles, and sound effects from GTA 4, to Rockstar possibly having a GTA 4 remaster of its own in development.
In 2023, XFire reported that a GTA 4 remaster was planned, set to be bundled with “two other GTA games”. However, it’s worth noting that it also claimed the two leads in GTA 6 would be siblings, which we now know is untrue.
Take-Two Interactive did say that it had plans to launch “two new iterations of previously-released titles in Fiscal 2024” (as reported by @videotechuk_), one of which appears to have been the Red Dead Redemption re-release and eventual PC port. It was reported in 2022 that the RDR port had been shelved alongside a GTA 4 remaster to focus on GTA 6, but as we now have RDR in our hands, perhaps Liberty City will be the next to make a comeback.
The explanation is probably a lot simpler, though. Rockstar rarely plays ball with modders. Two years ago, it issued a DMCA takedown against fans who were making GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 playable in VR, and a year prior, it issued DMCA takedown requests for popular Vice City and San Andreas mods. This isn’t out of the ordinary for Rockstar, unfortunately.
One of the biggest-selling games in history, Grand Theft Auto 5 takes you to open-world San Andreas. Assume the role of three characters, Trevor, Franklin, and Michael, as they take different paths in their criminal lives. The streets of Los Santos await in GTA 5.