The case was initially brought in 2021 due to the hacked versions of GTA3 and Vice City known as re3 and reVC. The lawsuit filed in 2021 by Take-Two Interactive against Grand Theft Auto modders for the reverse-engineered ports of Grand Theft Auto 3 and GTA: Vice City has been dismissed.
The re3 and reVC projects were, in essence, pre-Definitive Edition patches designed to make the original Grand Theft Auto games compatible with current hardware by fixing bugs and adding features like widescreen compatibility. Initially, Take-Two used a DMCA takedown complaint to get them taken from Github, but following a counter-claim by the creators, they were reinstated.
In response, Take-Two filed a complaint alleging that the modders had violated their intellectual property rights by “seek[ing] unlawfully to duplicate, alter, and distribute to the public infringing source code” for Grand Theft Auto 3 and Vice City.
In addition to pointing forth the allegedly unlawful nature of the mods themselves, the lawsuit also detailed the measures the defendant modders attempted to avoid the DMCA takedown request:
“In at least three separate instances between April and June of 2021, Defendants Orçunus, Morra, and Graber submitted sworn counter notifications to GitHub claiming the takedown of the repositories was mistaken or otherwise not legitimate. Take-Two is informed and believes, and on that basis alleges, that these counter notifications were made in bad faith, and knowingly and deliberately misrepresented to GitHub the contents of the re3 GitHub Repositories.”
According to TorrentFreak, the lawsuit did not progress much further until December 2022, when both parties asked that the discovery phase materials be shielded from public access due to the high likelihood that they would contain sensitive or proprietary information. After hearing rumors of a possible settlement, the motion to dismiss the lawsuit was finally filed on April 3.
The lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled, but only against the four defendants who were originally mentioned in the lawsuit: It was highlighted in the filing that “the remaining defendants are not discharged by this stipulation” because the case also named 10 John Does as defendants.
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However, in an amendment filed the following day, Take-Two also dismissed the case against those individuals, though without prejudice. Earlier this week, one of the John Doe defendants, “Ash R. and Ash 735”, who we can assume is the Twitter user Ash 735, retweeted the settlement filing.
Update: Take-Two Interactive has filed a second Notice of Dismissal, including veteran mod developer Ash R. and 2-10 John Does.
This court case is officially closed. It’s unlikely Take-Two will share the agreement publicly. https://t.co/Ade1TAZWNB pic.twitter.com/HV62yKTair
— Ben (@videotech_) April 4, 2023
Take-Two did not say if they settled with the modders or why they dropped the lawsuit, but the availability of legally upgraded versions of GTA3 and Vice City, despite the games’ rather raw shape when they premiered, may have rendered the lawsuit unnecessary. I have contacted Take-Two for comment and will update this post if I hear back from them.
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