GTA: Underground Has Been Shut Down After 'Increasing Hostility'
Say what you will of the quality of the Grand Theft Auto series as a whole, but it’s easy to admit - the franchise wouldn’t be much without its communities. Modders especially have kept the game relevant for a long time, from all-new single-player experiences in the classic titles to the GTA RP servers that have dominated Twitch over the last year, the game’s fans have innovated the series back to relevance when by all accounts it should have sunk.
But, one high profile mod has just been pulled in a dramatic fashion.
GTA: Underground Mod Shut Down
In a sad turn, the popular Grand Theft Auto mod GTA: Underground has come to an end after “increasing hostility towards the modding community”. The news was announced in a YouTube video that details the reasons that the mod has been pulled - and though the details are made purposefully vague, it’s clear that this wasn’t just from backlash inside the community.
The video itself is a credits sequence highlighting everyone that worked on the game, but the explanation comes in its description.
“Due to the increasing hostility towards the modding community and imminent danger to our mental and financial well-being, we officially ceased the development of GTA: Underground and have taken all of the downloads offline”, it reads.
It is not clear whether or not there was any involvement from Rockstar Games’ parent company, Take-Two Interactive, with the dreaded cease and desist letter. However, the use of the words 'financial well-being', are interesting in themselves.
It’s sad to see the mod go down like this after all of the hard work that was poured into it - but this might not be the end of the story just yet.
GTA: Underground’s Team Could Make Their Own Game
At the bottom of the video’s description, the UndergroundDev channel states: “Please do not leave this channel just yet. A lot of members in the team as well as some modders from outside the team have shown interest in making our own game title. We cannot confirm or deny anything about such a thing, but we’ll keep you posted.”
So, it looks like this might not be the end of the road for the team after all. It’d be great to see the developers rise again in the face of adversity, but until we see an official announcement, it remains as speculation.
Fingers crossed the team can make a comeback, and it’s great to see that they are continuing to work together - even if it's on something completely different.