GTA Vice City Next Gen was officially shut down.

Here is the official announcement by developers:

“First, our main YouTube channel was deleted. Then, our Telegram was blocked. Later, the trailer was removed from our new channel. And just a couple of days ago, we received an official complaint on VK from the Entertainment Software Association—an organization representing the interests of the copyright holder. If you do a quick search, you’ll find that company ****2 is a member of this association.

Yes, many people (including us) thought something like this was impossible. However, after consulting with a lawyer, it became clear that just because a company isn’t officially represented in a country doesn’t mean they don’t have copyright claims or legal tools to enforce them.

We have no complaints against VK’s administration—we understand that the platform operates within the law. We strongly urge you not to leave negative comments about them and, just in case, not to make any unnecessary noise about how this story is ending.

Per ESA’s demands, we had to remove certain posts. Comments also had to be closed to prevent links from being shared under the remaining posts. We had to take these steps because their complaint on VK got too close, and we don’t know what the consequences would be if we refused to comply.

We’re sorry that things are ending this way, but unfortunately, we can no longer share any information about the mod to avoid further issues. We are officially ceasing support for the project. But don’t worry—the promised patch will still be released, just not from our team. We’ve heard that a group of enthusiasts has appeared online, completely unrelated to us in ANY way. :)

Once again, we want to express our big gratitude to the entire community for your support! We never expected the project to generate such global excitement. We see everything, we read everything, and we truly appreciate it.

This week will stay in our memories forever. We definitely made some noise. We don’t know if our case will affect the broader policy on modding, but our own journey with mods is coming to an end.

There’s no point in making projects if you can’t openly talk about them or share them—especially when you know that everything could just disappear in a matter of days. We hope you understand.

Thank you for everything.”