Photo: Rockstar and Pexels
Rockstar Games fans haven't been too happy with the company lately due to recent events orchestrated by the publisher. When a GTA Online AI mod got taken down by Take-Two recently, players were left with a sour taste. The same thing happened with Blizzard and World of Warcraft's Classic private servers a few years back. Sadly, this isn't the only bad news for fans because they're also dissapointed with the original Red Dead Redemption re-release.
When AI first stepped into the scene a few years ago, it was one of the most sought-after novelties in the gaming industry. The developers and publishers saw a way to offload some of the employee workload to an AI, but that's not the most exciting part.
Gamers saw a new way to interact with NPCs (Non-Playable Characters). If, until the "rise of AI," these characters were limited to a couple of pre-written dialogue lines and performed actions based on pre-programmed scripts, by implementing Chat GPT to NPCs, you could speak through your microphone to these characters and have entire conversations. The mobility part remains the same for now.
It was only a matter of time until someone created a Grand Theft Auto V Online mod based on this idea. It was called "Sentient Streets" (very on the nose) and was made by an individual named "Bloc." The mod allowed players to interact with over 30 AI NPCs, each with its very own voice.
Anyone could have gone up to one of these in-game police officers, cult members, or civilians and have long conversations about whatever they wanted. Other people did the same thing in Skyrim. It adds an entirely new dimension to immersion, and while it's only in its infancy, mark my words when I say this entire AI shtick is part of the future of gaming.
Coming full circle to our story, Rockstar owner, Take-Two, took down a demo video from Bloc's YouTube channel and suspended their account on Netlify, an online guide that helped players install the mod. Also, Take-Two took down the mod from NexusMods, an ever-popular website. After all this, Bloc manually removed the mod from every other platform Rockstar's parent company hadn't touched yet.
After all was said and done, Bloc said: "I can, of course, raise an objection through YouTube's objection system, but this escalates things to legal authorities." They also stated, "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."
You can imagine this created an uproar in the GTA Online community, but at the end of the day, what can one person do against Rockstar?
This is the second most famous case of Take-Two removing unwanted footage from the Internet. The first similar scandal was regarding the GTA VI leaks, where content creators got Copyright Strikes left and right.
Rockstar was also involved in another scandal this week regarding the re-release of Red Dead Redemption (2010) on Nintendo Switch and PS4/PS5. While it went through a bit of a resolution upscale, the graphics and framerate remain the same as they were on the PS3 and Xbox 360 more than 13 years ago.
Some say that 30 fps in 2023 is outrageous, but if Starfield can get away with it, why not a 13-year-old game as well?
Gamers saw a new way to interact with NPCs (Non-Playable Characters). If, until the "rise of AI," these characters were limited to a couple of pre-written dialogue lines and performed actions based on pre-programmed scripts, by implementing Chat GPT to NPCs, you could speak through your microphone to these characters and have entire conversations. The mobility part remains the same for now.
It was only a matter of time until someone created a Grand Theft Auto V Online mod based on this idea. It was called "Sentient Streets" (very on the nose) and was made by an individual named "Bloc." The mod allowed players to interact with over 30 AI NPCs, each with its very own voice.
Anyone could have gone up to one of these in-game police officers, cult members, or civilians and have long conversations about whatever they wanted. Other people did the same thing in Skyrim. It adds an entirely new dimension to immersion, and while it's only in its infancy, mark my words when I say this entire AI shtick is part of the future of gaming.
Coming full circle to our story, Rockstar owner, Take-Two, took down a demo video from Bloc's YouTube channel and suspended their account on Netlify, an online guide that helped players install the mod. Also, Take-Two took down the mod from NexusMods, an ever-popular website. After all this, Bloc manually removed the mod from every other platform Rockstar's parent company hadn't touched yet.
After all was said and done, Bloc said: "I can, of course, raise an objection through YouTube's objection system, but this escalates things to legal authorities." They also stated, "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."
You can imagine this created an uproar in the GTA Online community, but at the end of the day, what can one person do against Rockstar?
This is the second most famous case of Take-Two removing unwanted footage from the Internet. The first similar scandal was regarding the GTA VI leaks, where content creators got Copyright Strikes left and right.
Rockstar was also involved in another scandal this week regarding the re-release of Red Dead Redemption (2010) on Nintendo Switch and PS4/PS5. While it went through a bit of a resolution upscale, the graphics and framerate remain the same as they were on the PS3 and Xbox 360 more than 13 years ago.
Some say that 30 fps in 2023 is outrageous, but if Starfield can get away with it, why not a 13-year-old game as well?
Google News