A fan had been working on reverse-engineering both Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City to provide the source code for both games to owners and fans to enjoy, only now it seems like IP holder Rockstar Games has slapped them with a takedown notice.
The new report (via Eurogamer) points to the reverse-engineering project being taken off its original GitHub post, and now the redacted takedown notice has been published there instead. You can read the new takedown notice here.
The notice appears to be from someone at Take-Two, the parent company of Rockstar Games, and states the project is “not licensed in any way” and that “the best and only solution is complete removal of the aforementioned pages.” The notice then suggests a list of files to remove, after which Github immediately took the files down.
Here’s a look at both games in their reverse-engineered and remastered forms:
The two reverse-engineering projects, re3 and reVC, opened both games up to a whole new world of modding capabilities now that users had access to the games source code. The above showcase video shows improvements already made like loading screens being removed or reduced, widescreen support, better controller functionality, and more.
Grand Theft Auto III was originally released back in 2001 for PlayStation 2, and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was released a year later for PS2 as well. Both games were later ported to Microsoft Windows, Xbox, and even mobile devices but haven’t gotten a proper remaster for modern consoles.
