GTA Vice City in your browser: Take-Two pulls it, then it comes back

For a few days in December 2025, GTA Vice City was playable in a web browser, phones included. It was hosted by DOS Zone, a site that specializes in running old PC games in the browser, and it went viral almost immediately. So viral that Take-Two sent a DMCA notice and the site had to take it down. That wasn't the end of the story, though.

How it worked

The port was built on reVC, the community's reverse-engineered rebuild of Vice City's code, compiled to run in the browser. It worked on computers with mouse and keyboard or a controller, and on iOS and Android with touch controls.

The full game required uploading files from an original copy. At first there was also a demo without that requirement, but DOS Zone switched it off within days, citing traffic costs and a wish "to avoid any risk of the project being shut down due to rights holder claims."

Take-Two's notice

It didn't help. The claim came from Ebrand, a brand protection firm acting for Take-Two, and its argument went beyond the demo:

"Your website further invites users to input data and keys from original game copies to access or unlock functionality. This activity facilitates unauthorized use of copyrighted game content and may constitute circumvention of technological protection measures."

In other words, as far as Take-Two was concerned, requiring an original copy didn't make the project legitimate. The letter demanded the removal of anything that let people play its games, and DOS Zone complied.

Update: back without the game files

Just days later, on December 30, the DOS Zone team relaunched it with one key change: the site no longer hosts any Rockstar files. Players upload their own through a button, and the page simply acts as the engine. The team also released the port's source and let anyone host or translate it, on three conditions: keep its logo in the menu, don't disable cloud saves and credit the team as the authors.

Update: GTA III joins the party

In September 2026, another site began offering Vice City and GTA III in the browser using the same approach. Press tests reported over 100 fps on desktop, smooth performance on phones, touch controls in landscape and portrait, a save manager and a frame-rate limiter, since Vice City was built for 30 fps and physics can break above that.

Why Take-Two is so strict

Vice City is still on sale almost everywhere, in its original form or as part of The Definitive Edition, mobile storefronts included. A free, install-free Vice City in any browser competes head-on with that, even if it asks for your files. Then there's the bigger picture: with GTA 6 heading back to Vice City, anything carrying that name is being watched closely.

Our take

This case shows where the line sits today. For Take-Two, requiring your own copy is no longer enough: asking for files or keys counts as enabling unauthorized use. Even so, these projects keep coming back in ever more careful forms, because the reVC and re3 code has been circulating freely for years. GTA House won't link to any of these sites.