The Grand Theft Auto 3 and Vice City reverse engineered fan project has been removed for a second time after Take-Two issued another takedown notice.
Titled ‘re3’, the project wants to offer “the fully reversed source code” for both games alongside a slew of improvements like a rotatable camera, widescreen support, and no loading screens between islands in the games.
Take-Two filed a lawsuit over the projects back in September, with the lawsuit itself stating that the programmers behind the project “are well aware that they do not possess the right to copy, adapt, or distribute derivative GTA source code, or the audiovisual elements of the games, and that doing so constitutes copyright infringement”.
The project was available on GitHub, and after the second takedown from Take-Two, the site complied, sharing the takedown notice. The notice requested that GitHub remove everything in relation to the ‘re3’ project, with Take-Two’s law firm Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp stating “we very much appreciate GitHub’s cooperation in this matter.”
After the first time the ‘re3’ project was taken down, project lead aap told Eurogamer they were worried a counterclaim may spark a lawsuit, but the team behind the project disputed Take-Two and the project ended up back on GitHub.
“We figured we have a good case for fair use on the grounds that we are improving and fixing the game as well as bringing it to new platforms,” aap said. “This was the reason for quite a few people to purchase the game from Take-Two to play it on their favourite platforms. So in fact we’re only making them money and we figured it would be unwise of them to actually go after us.
“So we went the normal route: one of our team members filed a counterclaim with GitHub and after a waiting period of about 14 days the repo got reinstated,” aap concluded.
With the lawsuit over the project ongoing, Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition has been rated in Korea, giving legitimacy to the rumours that Grand Theft Auto 3, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas are being remastered, which would support why Take-Two are going after unofficial ports of older GTA titles.
In other news, a new system is being used in New World to boot inactive players from servers attempting to avoid queue times.
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