By banning the modding tool “OpenIV”, Rockstar is drawing the wrath of the GTA 5 community. Petitions demand the saving of mods.
The people behind the action game Grand Theft Auto V (Take-Two and Rockstar Games) have faced harsh criticism in recent days. For security reasons, they have banned the modding tool “OpenIV” and are taking away players’ chance to try out modified content in the game.
Now the community is fighting against this ban, collecting online signatures and showing their dissatisfaction with the decision against mods through negative user reviews on Steam.
GTA 5 “extremely negative” on Steam
Modifications in GTA 5 are a major feature for the community. This allows for texture changes or entirely new game modes to be played in GTA 5. Take-Two and Rockstar recently decided to ban one of the most popular tools and sent a cease and desist letter to the developers of OpenIV.
Since the ban became public, there has been a flood of negative Steam reviews from the community.
Originally, GTA 5 had been rated “mostly positive” since its release. The day before yesterday, the reviews were “mixed” with about 48% thumbs up. Since then, the ratings have become “extremely negative” with about 82% of over 26,000 ratings being negative. A harsh blow to the image of the otherwise popular online game GTA 5.
Petitions for the Saving of OpenIV
Negative reviews are not the only way the community shows how important mods are to them. With a petition on Change.org, they want to express their passion for these special features. There are now more than 28,000 signatures there in favor of the savings of OpenIV.
The user “tOy is cool” addresses the petition to Rockstar Games and Take-Two. In the description, it states that the ban on OpenIV takes away access to their modified games from over 10,000 players and prevents players from continuing their hobby. The OpenIV mods are for the single-player mode of GTA 5 and were never used for the multiplayer mode. “Therefore, they harm no one,” it says in the petition.
The petition aims to allow the use and work on OpenIV to be permitted again and to declare modding of Grand Theft Auto (San Andreas, IV and V) as “legal” once more.
If you want to support the saving of OpenIV, you can do so on Change.org. Here’s the link to the petition for OpenIV on Change.org
With OpenIV, the Liberty City map from GTA IV was to be integrated into GTA V. The project is now on hold.
