When you put a game on PC, there’s a fun little “risk” you run involving modding. Since gamers realized they could mod video games, they did just that. Sometimes it was simple things like putting in a skin for a character they loved in the title. Other times they would make “improvements” to the game to do things that the developers wouldn’t. It’s also true that sometimes these mods were nothing more than cheats, which has gotten many in trouble. But for one GTA V modder, he’s found himself in trouble because of a game mode he made that really angered the game’s publisher.
As noted by IGN, the modder, Bloc, made a mod known as the “Sentient Streets Mode” for GTA V. The point of the mod was to use AI to deliver fresh dialogue and voices to a couple of dozen NPCs and drive forward a new story through them.
The mod itself was unveiled on YouTube, and that’s where the problems started. After Block revealed it, Take-Two Interactive filed a copyright strike against it. Then, they went around and either removed the mod from places like NexusMods, or they suspended whatever accounts Bloc had on mod sites so that people couldn’t find the mod.
As you can imagine, Bloc wasn’t very happy about this and willingly removed the mod simply because he couldn’t fight back against the game developer:
“I can, of course, raise an objection through YouTube’s objection system, but this escalates things to legal authorities. I am a single modder who does this in my free time for fun, so I don’t have the resources to legally defend myself in this situation. Frankly, I also don’t want to spend time on this.”
But there’s a small twist in this tale. Bloc claims that Take-Two or YouTube did not warn him about this “violation.” Typically, if you do something wrong, you’re given a heads up, and things are done to the video so that you can keep it up while explaining what happened and seeing if you could change it.
As Bloc pointed out in his statement, he’s unsure why he was given a copyright strike when plenty of GTA V videos out there haven’t been given the same order despite showing off the title in various ways.
He further pointed out that his mod was free and didn’t use any of the voices from the game’s NPCs. So in his mind, he’s done nothing wrong.
