A popular modding tool for GTA V among other games was taken down about a week ago, when the creators received a case and desist letter from Take Two. Obviously the modders felt they had no choice to avoid legal action.

OpenIV had been going since 2008 and as well as GTA V had been used for modding it’s predecesor GTA IV and Max Payne 3. A lot of people used it and a lot of people loved it. However, the notice gave the developers little choice and they took down all the files and ceases distribution entirely.

The player response has not exactly been favourable to Take Two and Rockstar, with the Steam rating of reviews given to the GTA V game going from a highly Positive percentage down to Mixed – with many of the new reviews stating the takedown of OpenIV was what was causing them to review it as Negative now. Now a petition has popped up on Change.org asking Rockstar to ‘save’ the mod by allowing the team behind it to distribute it again, as well as asking that modding “be deemed legal again” across the series.

“The closing of OpenIV leaves 10,000s of people without access to be able to mod their games, and leaves 10,000s of people without the ability to continue their hobbies. All modding used by OpenIV is for singleplayer use only to make the game more enjoyable, the software OpenIV was never used to mod multiplayer or Grand Theft Auto Online so it does not harm anyone.”

However, the response from Rockstar a few days back disagrees on that last point about the mods being kept to singleplayer, as they stated that the reason Take Two had to tackle OpenIV was that it had been the basis for a number of recent malicious mods that “allow harassment of players and interfere with the GTA Online experience for everybody.” They have also stated that they are working to find a way they can “continue to support the creative community without negatively impacting our players.”