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Take-Two suing team that reverse-engineered GTA 3 and Vice City source code

Take-Two suing team that reverse-engineered GTA 3 and Vice City source code

Rockstar parent company Take-Two is taking the developers who reverse-engineered the source code for both Grand Theft Auto 3 and Vice City to court.

As spotted by GI.biz, the publishing giant has filed a suit with the San Francisco division of the Northern District of California against the team of 14 individuals from around the world, nine of which are whose identities are currently unknown.

Take-Two's issue with said group is the allegations that it has not only has reverse-engineered the source code – dubbed re3 and reVC – for the aforementioned crime romps, but also "sought unlawfully to copy, adapt, and distribute" this to the public.

These projects are being hosted in repositories on Microsoft's Github.com, which the Rockstar parent firm has tried to remove these via DMCA requests. Some of the team involved in the reverse engineering work submitted counter notices to these strikes, saying that "the takedown of the repositories was mistaken or otherwise not legitimate."

Like most giants of the games publishing scene, Take-Two is pretty litigious when it comes to its IP. Earlier this year, the firm took down Grand Theft Auto cheat site LunaCheats.

 


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.