The modding project creating a tool to import Liberty City from Grand Theft Auto IV into GTA V has, sadly, shut down. It was the work of the team behind unofficial modding tool OpenIV [official site] but, after the fuss which saw the owners of GTA briefly shut down OpenIV with legal threats before making peace, they now say they can’t make it. Such a tool would be against the new Rockstar modding policy, see. But hey, at least OpenIV is back and its development will continue.

The OpenIV team went quiet for a bit after last month’s troubles but broke their silence last night to thank people for their support and to answer some questions. “Unfortunately, we were unable to answer those questions earlier due to real life (yeah we have some),” they said in yesterday’s statement. Ooh, hark at you!

“The development of OpenIV will be continued as before. OpenIV never supported GTA Online modding and will not support it in the future. Our work will be continued within the Rockstar modding policy.”

After Take-Two shut down OpenIV, Rockstar said that it was because the tool enabled several “malicious mods” in Grand Theft Auto Online. This was puzzling because OpenIV has never supported meddling with GTA Online, but lead Yuriy ‘Good-NDS’ Krivoruchko did concede that naughty people might have found a way to do it.

Sadly, the new GTA modding landscape means OpenIV’s Liberty City project is dead.

While some modders have already brought Liberty City to GTA V by ripping and repackaging it from GTA IV, it’s scrappy and leaves a city devoid of life. OpenIV’s approach seemed most polished – and dodging the potential legal troubles of distributing Rockstar’s work. The plan was to let people download a program which would import Liberty City from their own copy of GTA IV and spit it out for GTA V. Alas, it falls foul of the modding policy that Rockstar created in June.

Rockstar’s modding policy states that their corporate overlords have agreed they “generally will not take legal action” against mods which are singleplayer, non-commercial, and respectful of intellectual property rights. But the policy makes an exception for “use or importation of other IP (including other Rockstar IP) in the project”, which apparently blocks the Liberty City Conversion. OpenIV say:

“Unfortunately, our highly anticipated mod ‘Liberty City in GTA V’ will not be released because it clearly contradicts with Rockstar modding policy. Liberty City mod is a big loss for us, since it was a huge part of our motivation to push OpenIV functionality.”

They conclude, “If you are wondering what is next, well, we are currently revising our plans for the future.”