Since Take-Two did not dispute the counter-claim, GitHub restored everything. It is possible, in retrospect, that Take-Two ignored the counter-claim on purpose as a chance to escalate things further following the restoration and set a scary example to anyone else who would try the tactic.
True enough, Take-Two's legal team has gone and launched an infringement lawsuit in California, which was almost immediately followed by GitHub removing all of the Re3 and reVC content again, once again posting standard DMCA notices on all of the pages previously related to the project and its forks.
The legal team is also going straight for the jugular — Take-Two is seeking damages and is specifically geared towards setting a major precedent regarding the usage of counter-claims, which it styled as "bad-faith" in order to essentially poison the feature against future use.
Defendants are well aware that they do not possess the right to copy, adapt, or distribute derivative GTA source code, or the audiovisual elements of the Games, and that doing so constitutes copyright infringement. Defendant aap even stated publicly that he was "very much worried" about TakeTwo’s discovery of the re3 and reVC projects. And, when Take-Two attempted to remove Defendants’ infringing source code from the Internet, at least three Defendants (acting in at least one instance with other Defendants’ participation and direction) knowingly filed bad faith counter notifications that materially misrepresented the legality of their content, apparently claiming that because they allegedly 'reverse engineered' the Games’ source code, they somehow cannot be liable for copyright infringement.
The team behind Re3 and reVC has argued that their project fell under fair use, but it isn't clear whether this will hold up in court.
If the latest reports are true, then the Grand Theft Auto: the Trilogy — The Definitive Edition will launch this November. This will bring remastered versions of GTA 3, GTA Vice City and GTA San Andreas in the Unreal Engine to PC and current consoles. How the lawsuit turns out remains to be seen.
