What Rockstar actually takes down, measured in two repositories
One GTA repository was blocked in 2021 and still returns 451. Another was hit in December 2025 and was still taking commits on 11 September 2026. The gap between those two outcomes is the enforcement record.
The name on the paperwork is Take-Two Interactive, not Rockstar Games. Take-Two is the named complainant on effectively every DMCA notice and court filing. Rockstar’s name goes on policy documents and public statements.
Two measurements, both taken on 11 September 2026.
GTAmodding/re3, a source-code recreation of Grand Theft Auto III, returns HTTP 451 from the GitHub API. Reason: dmca. Block created 30 September 2021. The lawsuit behind it ended in April 2023.
multitheftauto/mtasa-blue, the repository behind Multi Theft Auto, returns HTTP 200. GPL-3.0, not archived, 1,849 stars, last push at 08:39 UTC on the morning of the measurement. Take-Two filed a DMCA notice against that repository on 5 December 2025.
One project was taken down five years ago and is still down. The other was taken down nine months ago and is being committed to. The difference between them is the most useful thing in the enforcement record.
A takedown is a dated event. A block is a state that outlives it. Only the first one shows up if you read the news instead of the API.
The repository that is still 451
On 19 February 2021 Take-Two sent GitHub a DMCA notice against re3 and reVC, source-code recreations of GTA III and Vice City, stating “The work is not licensed in any way”. The notice named the parent repository plus roughly 200 individually enumerated forks.
Three fork owners and collaborators filed counter notices between April and June 2021. GitHub’s published rule is that after a counter notice it waits 10 to 14 days and re-enables the content unless the copyright owner starts legal action. Take-Two did not, and the repositories came back in June 2021.
On 3 September 2021 Take-Two sued: Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. v. Papenbrock et al., docket 3:21-cv-06831, Northern District of California. The complaint alleged the source files contained not only derivative code but “Take-Two’s original digital content such as text, character dialog, and certain game assets”. It also alleged that three of the defendants, Orcunus, Morra and Graber, had submitted counter notices in bad faith. GitHub removed the repositories again on 4 October 2021.
The parties reported a settlement in principle on 6 February 2023. The named defendants were dismissed with prejudice in April 2023. Terms were never disclosed.
The block did not move. It is still in place more than three years after the case that produced it closed, and no mechanism for restoration was found in any source consulted for this register. The sweeping did not stop either: a second fork, halpz/re3, was blocked on 28 April 2025, tied to a Take-Two notice three days earlier.
The repository that came back
The 5 December 2025 notice against mtasa-blue claimed it hosted “a leaked source code” infringing Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, and that “This content must be completely disabled, there are no remedies to rectify this clear case of infringement.”
Multi Theft Auto counter-noticed on 22 December 2025. The argument was narrow and technical: the repository “contains only original, independently developed source code” and “operates by interacting at runtime with a lawfully installed, user-supplied copy of the original game.” No game assets extracted, copied or redistributed.
The same clock ran. Take-Two did not sue. GitHub restored the repository in full in early January 2026.
One procedural detail is on the record and worth keeping. GitHub’s own header on the MTA notice says that before disabling anything it “contacted the owners of some or all of the affected repositories to give them an opportunity to make changes”. That is not the standard path.
This part matters for roleplay specifically. MTA lists real-life role-playing among its server genres, which means RP in the GTA lineage predates FiveM, and the project carrying that history is the one that survived a direct notice.
Where the line appears to sit
MTA ships no Rockstar assets and hooks a lawfully installed copy at runtime. re3 was a reconstruction of the game itself, and Take-Two’s complaint said as much.
That is not a safe harbor for reverse engineering. Take-Two’s position is written down, in a notice dated 24 September 2024: “The use and distribution of our code reverse engineered or not is being done without permission.” Counter-noticing is not free either. It worked twice, and in the re3 case it was pleaded against the people who filed it.
The wider pattern in GitHub’s public archive is routine rather than dramatic. Thirteen Take-Two-originated notices are dated between February 2021 and December 2025, at roughly quarterly intervals. Notices of 6 February 2024 and 28 May 2024 targeted repositories that only linked to code, one of them a single markdown file of links.
Third-party multiplayer platforms are handled on a different track. alt:V announced a structured shutdown in February 2026, and altv.mp returned HTTP 502 when it was last measured on 28 August 2026. Take-Two ordered RAGE:MP to cease operations in late May 2026, described in coverage as an expedited shutdown with a migration path to FiveM rather than a lawsuit. RAGE:MP was still serving 33,503 players across 162 servers when that was measured on 28 August 2026, and it was still up when we read the same listing on 11 September, eleven days past its own end-of-support date, at 134 servers and 14,349 players. Read the dates on those two numbers rather than the gap between them: both are single readings of a live counter taken at unrecorded hours, and the only thing they establish together is that an order to shut down is not the same as a platform already dark. Both platforms carried correct trademark disclaimers. alt:V’s FAQ stated it “doesn’t connect to Rockstar services or make any changes to your game files.” A disclaimer saved neither of them from the order.
FiveM survived by being acquired. The Creator Platform License Agreement now in force, dated 12 January 2026, grants operators “a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, revocable license”. Nothing built on it is held by right.
Meanwhile open.mp, the open-source SA-MP successor, had no block and no archive at measurement.
What is not known
Whether the re3 block will ever lift. The case ended with prejudice and nothing public describes a route back.
Whether a server list, wiki or database has ever been targeted. No such action was found in any source consulted for this register. That is a negative result from a broad search, not proof that none exists, and it has to be re-tested after the game ships.
What happens at launch. No Rockstar statement about GTA 6 modding or roleplay support appears anywhere in this record.
One last note on measurement, since it is this site’s whole product. The same register recorded 1,834 stars on mtasa-blue when it was compiled in late August 2026. The figure was 1,849 on 11 September. A measured number is true on the day it is taken, and the honest version of any number is the one that carries its date.