The OpenIV modding tool is now officially back in action for Grand Theft Auto Vfollowing the recent legal fracas which concluded at the close of last month, but the downside here is that the OpenIV team has cancelled a big project – namely ‘Liberty City in GTA V’.

OpenIV – a utility which allows players to extensively customize the game – was shut down early in June when it came under legal fire from Take-Two’s lawyers over in Russia, but the GTA V publisher subsequently relented after a huge community backlash.

And now the OpenIV folks have made an official announcement that they’re back in business, thanking all the fans for their support, and noting that the “modding community is still a minority, but [a] very vocal, creative and determined minority”.

The team also noted that the development of OpenIV would continue on exactly as before.

Death of Liberty

That’s obviously great news for modders, but as mentioned, the not-so-wonderful news is that the major mod Liberty City in GTA V has been binned – a project which, as the name suggests, was going to recreate the city from Grand Theft Auto IV in GTA V.

The mod was scrapped because it “clearly contradicts Rockstar modding policy”; in other words, it tramples over IP (intellectual property) issues.

The team wrote: “Liberty City mod is a big loss for us, since it was a huge part of our motivation to push OpenIV functionality.”

So this is something of a compromise, in the end, although in the main fans are just pleased that OpenIV itself hasn’t been shot down, even if Liberty City has been razed.

Given that this abandoned project leaves a big hole, what’s coming instead of it? The team would only say that they are currently revising plans for the future, so we’ll just have to wait and see.