GTA VR modder receives DMCA from Take-Two

Luke Ross, a creator of VR mods for Grand Theft Auto 5, Red Dead Redemption 2 and the Mafia series, has suffered a DMCA takedown notice from Take-Two Interactive through Patreon.

On his Patreon blog, the modder explained the situation, saying that Take-Two are “demanding that I remove all their copyrighted works from my Patreon page.”  which he considers dubious, elaborating that “none of my modifications are built using software belonging to Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc, and the modifications are not intended to replace their games, nor are they a means of exploiting Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc’s proprietary IP or assets.”

In the latest updates to the post at the time of writing, Ross has said that Take-Two has failed to respond to his requests for an open dialogue on the matter, and that Patreon itself had “offered to try and establish a direct channel” but had since gone radio silent. 

As such, he has been forced to make changes to his software to deal with the unfortunate situation, saying that “my R.E.A.L. framework will be updated to a new version that completely removes support for Rockstar and 2K games. Unless/until an agreement is reached with Take-Two, I will also be in the position where I won’t be able to respond to any support requests regarding those games, at least as long as the matter is being disputed.”. The VR framework will still support several other AAA titles, including Dark Souls, Horizon Zero Dawn, Cyberpunk 2077 and others.

The DMCA is likely to be driven by the fact that Take-Two announced Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas VR in 2021 as a Meta Quest 2 exclusive title. Take-Two Interactive often seems to get heavy-handed ahead of a new release, having previously taken efforts to bring down user created mods for the existing PC versions of the PlayStation 2-era Grand Theft Auto games shortly before releasing the widely panned Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition remasters last year.

Other VR software mods that are compatible with Take-Two’s games (like VorpX) are currently still available.