Planning to cruise through Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and its neon-soaked streets directly from your browser this holiday season? Too late. Take-Two Interactive just slammed the door shut on the project.
The DOS Zone team's browser port was nothing short of a technical marvel. Players could load up the entire open-world experience of the 2002 classic right in their Chrome or Firefox browsers without downloading anything.
Performance was reportedly flawless, with users connecting controllers and cruising through Tommy Vercetti's criminal empire just like they remembered from the PlayStation 2 days. The project lasted barely a week before Take-Two's legal team showed up with cease-and-desist notices.
The DOS Zone team had attempted to do things the "right" way. They required players to upload their own legitimate copy of the game files to play the full version and tried to operate in what they hoped was a legal gray area, thinking this ownership requirement would keep Take-Two's lawyers at bay, but it wasn't enough.
The company, acting through a brand protection firm called Ebrand, sent an email demanding immediate removal of the project. The message accused The DOS Zone of facilitating unauthorized use of copyrighted content and potentially circumventing technological protection measures.
They claimed the project was misleading to users and infringed on Take-Two's intellectual property rights. Take-Two has a well-documented history of shutting down fan projects, and Vice City seems to attract particular attention from their legal department.
The timing here is almost comically bad for nostalgic gamers. Just as word was spreading about this incredible feat of browser-based gaming, the project vanished. Anyone visiting The DOS Zone's Vice City page now sees only a notice about the DMCA takedown and a screenshot of the email from Take-Two's representatives.
Take-Two only sells the Definitive Edition, released originally as part of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition, which many consider inferior due to missing music tracks from the original soundtrack.
The browser version offered a way to experience the game as it was originally intended, complete with all the iconic songs like "I Ran (So Far Away)" by A Flock of Seagulls and "Video Killed the Radio Star" that are now absent from the official version.
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Take-Two's stance on certain types of fan projects isn't new. They've consistently shut down mods, remakes, and unofficial ports over the years. The company appears determined to control every aspect of how their games are experienced, even when those games are over two decades old and no longer available in their original form. Case in point: Take-Two previously sued developers behind Re3 and reVC, reverse-engineered versions of Grand Theft Auto III and Vice City that ran on modern systems. They've shut down ambitious Vice City recreation projects and killed the OpenIV modding tool.
For now, anyone wanting to experience the original title will need to either purchase the modified Definitive Edition or hunt down increasingly rare and expensive original copies from key resellers. Even then, getting those old versions to run on modern systems often requires additional patches and modifications.
Take-Two is well within its legal rights to do this. Nobody's arguing otherwise. But being legally correct doesn't make it any less frustrating for everyone who just wants to experience classic GTA the way they came out.
