GTA Vice City Nextgen Edition launches despite Take-Two takedown

Two days after Take-Two wiped its YouTube channel without warning, the Russian modding group Revolution Team went ahead and released GTA Vice City Nextgen Edition on January 25, 2025, exactly as promised. The project moves all of GTA Vice City, from the map to the missions, cutscenes and radio stations, onto GTA IV's RAGE engine.

A total conversion, not a texture pack

This isn't a map port or a graphics mod. It's close to a one-to-one remake: the 2002 game rebuilt on 2008 technology, so Tommy Vercetti's story plays out with GTA IV's physics, animations, gunplay and driving. The team spent nearly two years on it.

• City and weapons: improved versions of the ones from The Definitive Edition.
• Cars: every vehicle from the original Xbox release.
• Characters and pedestrians: the Xbox models, with sharper textures.
• Missions: the whole story plus side content, rebuilt for the new engine.
• Cutscenes: the originals, in their original style.
• Music: every original radio station.
• Extras: Vice City Stories-style neon signage, plus better particles and lighting.

The takedown and how the team responded

Revolution Team says the channel was removed over copyright complaints about the project's videos, with no warning and no attempt to contact them. The group set up a new channel and kept the promised release date.

The takedown also changed what was released. The original plan was to require an official game install "to show respect to the publisher." After the channel went down, the team rebuilt the project in two days as a standalone package that needs nothing else to run.

Why Take-Two is cracking down now

The timing isn't random. Earlier in January, the Liberty City Preservation Project, which was bringing GTA IV's Liberty City into GTA V, was shut down after what its creators described as an amicable agreement with Rockstar. The classic trilogy is also still on sale as The Definitive Edition, so a free and better-looking Vice City competes head-on with a paid product.

There's a bigger issue too: a package that no longer needs any purchased game is distributing Rockstar's assets, which puts it on far shakier legal ground than mods that make you supply your own copy. That's why GTA House won't link to any download. If you go looking for it anyway, be wary of sketchy reuploads, a classic way to spread malware.

Update: the team walks away

The story ended quickly. On February 2, 2025, Revolution Team announced it was ending support for Vice City Nextgen Edition. According to its statement, the YouTube takedown was followed by the blocking of its Telegram account and an official complaint on VK from the ESA, the trade body representing major US video game publishers, Take-Two included. After consulting lawyers, the team concluded that a company keeps its rights, and the tools to enforce them, even without an official presence in a country, so it removed posts and closed comments to stop links being shared.

"We're sorry that things are ending this way, but unfortunately, we can no longer share any information about the mod," the team wrote, while hinting that a group of enthusiasts "completely unrelated" to it might release updates in the future.

Our take

What Revolution Team pulled off is the closest thing to a proper remaster Vice City has ever had. A group of fans managing in two years what many hoped the official 2021 release would be says a lot about the community, and about what went wrong back then. Take-Two is within its rights to protect its IP, but deleting a channel two days before launch backfired: the project never got more attention than it did that weekend.

Later on, Revolution Team would reveal its next target: GTA San Andreas on the GTA V engine.