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GTA Vice City Nextgen Edition (Take-Two / ESA, 2025)

What it was: a port of GTA: Vice City into the RAGE engine of GTA IV, made by the Russian team Revolution Team. It initially required a legitimate GTA IV copy to run.

Timeline:

  • ~2 days before the planned 2025-01-25 release, Take-Two terminated the team's YouTube channel via third-party copyright claims.
  • The team rebuilt the release as standalone (no GTA IV required) and shipped on schedule anyway.
  • In February 2025, an ESA complaint (delivered via VK) forced them to remove the download links and end support.

Context: the project reused Vice City assets and music, and it landed while the GTA: The Trilogy — The Definitive Edition was the paid alternative. Former Rockstar developer Obbe Vermeij was blunt: "This is what companies are supposed to do… directly competes with the Definitive Edition."

Lesson: platform enforcement (channel termination by copyright claim) can arrive before any legal letter, and rebuilding to remove the dependency does not save the project — the second wave came from the industry body, not the publisher.

Sources: IGN, Eurogamer, GTA BOOM, GamesRadar, Sportskeeda, RockstarINTEL, Substack.