Take-Two takes GTA 5 modding very seriously.

Two of the most prominent GTA 5 mods, FiveM and GTA:MP, have ceased to exist. Both mods were designed to be a way for players to play GTA 5 online outside of Rockstar’s official servers.

The creator of FiveM, has taken to Reddit to reveal a little bit of back story. “So I just got a pair of private investigators at my door claiming to be sent by Take Two,” he wrote.

Players who were found using FiveM were banned, back in August.

“[They] handed me a phone with a person somewhere in the UK or US or whatever to ‘discuss how to cease my activities with regard to Grand Theft Auto, that ‘they know what happened before with Activision and want to not get the lawyers involved at this time’,” he continued.

The mod creator goes on to say he was advised Take-Two is “certain of its point” and is willing to accept “no solution other than ceasing his activities.” “Oh, they also ‘couldn’t disclose any conversations they’re having with other modification developers’, didn’t want to talk about general modification policy as ‘it was just about my case’ and admitted they ‘looked through my source code’,” he adds.

Coincidently, the publisher also contacted makers of GTA:MP, which has also ceased development.

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“Take-Two Interactive Inc. have contacted us and they asked us to stop GTA:Multiplayer, because from Take-Two’s point of view GTA:MP is a rival of their business,” the developers wrote in an update. “We, as developers, respect other developer’s intellectual property and their legitimate interests. Rockstar’s developers have invested so much time to create this beautiful game.”

Strangely, the mod creators say they’ve been “in contact” with Rockstar and even received feedback on their mod.

“You have to see that Take-Two Interactive Inc. is the publisher and Rockstar Games only the developer. We have never endorsed piracy, in fact, we encouraged the buying of the game and never touched Rockstar Social Club as other modifications did or still do.”

Rockstar always said it aims to protect users against modifications to the online service. These two mods aimed at creating a functioning online service – sort of like a private server – that didn’t rely at all on Rockstar’s service. Players used this to be able to mod the game all they want without fear of getting banned from the real thing.

Rockstar’s worries, however, that these code alterations could open up the door to piracy.