Grand Theft Auto studio backpedals after Take-Two shuts down OpenIV modding tool

The infrastructure tool that enables many of the best mods for Grand Theft Auto IV and GTA V could return after the Rockstar Games studio and publisher Take-Two Interactive sent a cease-and-desist order to the people who distribute that software.

Rockstar Games has posted a new policy about single-player mods that opens the door to the return of the OpenIV framework that is crucial to many mods in the most recent GTA open-world crime adventures. The studio is still planning to do everything it can to protect the integrity of GTA Online, its services-based persistent multiplayer world that generates hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues from in-game transactions. But Rockstar’s single-player modding policy, which its lawyers clearly wrote, claims that the company will “generally” not pursue legal action to pull that content offline.