Take-Two is Cracking Down Hard on GTA 5

Last week, we learned that Take-Two, the publisher behind GTA 5, sent a sloppy but still dangerous Cease-and-Desist letter to OpenIV, a popular modding tool in the GTA 5 community that allowed players to really go crazy in the game's single-player mode. People got outraged, of course (and presumably still are), but Take-Two justified the move by saying they were taking a stand against online cheating... a claim that was loudly contested by fans as this tool was made expressly for single-player mods and wouldn't even function online.

But Take-Two was unmoved by the roars of the masses, and has continued onward... and it's becoming clear now that the company is indeed serious about purging the internet of anything that could threaten GTA Online, as over the weekend they've targeted not one, not two, but three different popular hacking tools that were used by the scummiest GTA Online players to give themselves huge advantages and mess around with the more honest players.

They shut down Force Hax, a subscription-based cheating tool where you could get infinite money (either spawn it or by stealing it from other players), spawn items and vehicles, or just kick other players off the server. Similar, if slightly less menacing "mod menus" Lexicon and Menyoo, were also struck with Cease-and-Desist letters, forcing them to stop selling their products to the masses online. But the best part is that Take-Two is demanding that these cheat creators donate all of their earnings (which was an undisclosed sum) to a charity of their choosing, rather than hand it over to Take-Two itself.

Fans have, of course, taken much kinder to this news than to the shut-down of OpenIV, praising the company for stopping these popular cheats (about time, too), and the added touch of a charity contribution certainly helped a great deal. While it's far from enough to earn total forgiveness, it does show that Take-Two isn't being careless here: they know exactly what they're doing, and now, we certainly have a better idea of what that is, as well: a total purge of both good and bad mods for their landmark game.

If that's better or worse in the long run, thought? We'll have to see.