GTA Modders Think They Found the Perfect Way to Avoid Getting Sued: Pretend It's AI

Take-Two Interactive has spent years taking down Grand Theft Auto mods and remakes that rebuild classic titles in newer engines. Revolution Team, the Russian modding group behind the defunct GTA Vice City Nextgen Edition, knows this better than most. So when the team released a new gameplay progress video for its upcoming GTA San Andreas Nextgen Edition mod, it came with a detail that has the internet equal parts amused and impressed: a fake Sora AI watermark plastered over the footage.

The idea is as clever as it is absurd. By making the gameplay video look like it was generated by OpenAI's Sora, the team is essentially daring Take-Two to file a copyright claim against what it's claiming as AI content. It's a legal gray area wrapped in a joke, and it might just work.

For those unfamiliar, Revolution Team announced GTA San Andreas Nextgen Edition back in December 2025, shortly after calling its Vice City Nextgen Edition project complete. That earlier mod, which rebuilt Grand Theft Auto: Vice City from the ground up inside Grand Theft Auto IV's RAGE engine with working missions, cutscenes, and original cheats, was a genuine passion project that took years to complete.

Things took a turn when it was also the subject of a DMCA takedown from Take-Two, which forced the team to stop publicly distributing the mod. By the time the dust settled, GTA Vice City: Next-Gen Edition had already found its audience through alternative channels, but the message from Take-Two was clear. Nevertheless, they persisted, and the new project is even more ambitious.

GTA San Andreas Nextgen Edition will port the entirety of Rockstar's 2004 classic into Grand Theft Auto V's iteration of the RAGE engine. Every story mission, side activity, and the sprawling three-city map of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas covering Los Santos, San Fierro, and Las Venturas is being rebuilt. The jump from GTA IV's engine to GTA V's is significant, giving the modders access to better lighting, physics, and handling systems than what they had to work with on the Vice City project.

Revolution Team has stated from the outset that it would share details "more cautiously" compared to the Vice City mod's development. Given that Take-Two had already issued takedowns against Vice City: Next-Gen Edition and has a documented history of going after remaster-style mods, the modders know exactly what they're up against.

Take-Two's copyright policy explicitly prohibits "porting existing game content to a platform or game engine where it is not otherwise officially available," which is where the Sora watermark stunt becomes equal parts comedy and ingenuity.

Will it work? We can't say for sure. Just weeks ago, Take-Two started issuing takedowns against AI-generated GTA-like worlds created with Google's Project Genie tool. The company also made it explicitly clear that Grand Theft Auto 6 has zero generative AI in its development, with CEO Strauss Zelnick telling investors that every element of the upcoming game is "handcrafted."

So Take-Two is simultaneously fighting AI content that looks like GTA and fighting human-made content that rebuilds GTA. Revolution Team, by disguising the latter as the former, has essentially created a copyright paradox - other than the fact that their development of this project is known and documented, but we'll see how it shakes out.

If Take-Two files a copyright claim against the video, it acknowledges that the content is real gameplay footage of its intellectual property being rebuilt by modders. If it doesn't, the video stays up and generates attention for a project that Take-Two would prefer didn't exist. By slapping a fake AI watermark on it, Revolution Team is forcing Take-Two to pick its poison, and doing so with a sense of humor that GTA fans can certainly understand.

Of course, none of this actually protects Revolution Team from legal action if Take-Two decides to go after the mod itself. A watermark on a YouTube video doesn't change the underlying copyright situation. The mod still uses Rockstar's intellectual property, still ports content between engines, and still falls squarely within the scope of what Take-Two considers a violation.

Revolution Team hasn't given a release date, and given the scope of San Andreas compared to Vice City, it's going to be a significantly longer development cycle. In the meantime, the team is doing what it has always done: building something impressive in spite of the legal risks, and apparently having a good laugh.

All of this is to say that Rockstar and Take-Two might let this one pass as it focuses its resources on GTA 6 and its upcoming marketing schedule ahead of its release on November 19, 2026, on PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series S/X. A PC version has not been confirmed.