A Russian modding team’s ambitious project to revitalize Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was met with a harsh takedown by Rockstar Games. Just two days before its release, the team’s YouTube channel, showcasing their “GTA Vice City NextGen Edition” mod, was deleted. This mod was a significant undertaking, involving almost two years of work and featuring a complete recreation of Vice City within the RAGE engine, the same engine used for GTA IV. This offered a stark contrast to Rockstar’s own “Definitive Edition” remaster, which, while visually updated through the Unreal Engine, retained the outdated RenderWare physics engine from the original 2002 release.
The NextGen Edition mod wasn’t just a visual upgrade. It included the entire original storyline, rewritten from scratch and featuring all-new cutscenes rendered in the RAGE engine. The mod also boasts additional missions (city services, races, side missions, remote control missions, stunt jumps, and hidden packages), original cheats, Xbox version assets, enhanced character models, all radio stations (including cut tracks), and improved in-game design and loading screens. All this was achieved by a team of just 4 Russian modders working without any commercial incentive, simply driven by passion for the game.
Despite its blatant copyright infringement (the mod includes all original Vice City assets - sounds, music, and more), Rockstar, while taking down the team’s YouTube channel, seemingly hasn’t targeted the mod’s distribution. This is probably because the team, operating from Russia, dumped the public files making it difficult to fully suppress. I think Rockstar should consider hiring this talented team to remake other classic GTA titles (III and San Andreas) using the RAGE engine, suggesting this fan-made project surpasses Rockstar’s official remaster in quality and faithfulness to the original experience. The video demonstrates the mod’s functionality, showcasing gameplay, highlighting improved graphics, more populated streets, working missions, property purchases, and even the presence of classic cheats. There are some quirks, primarily stiff driving physics inherited from GTA IV but changed around to fit Vice City driving, but the overall game is quite polished and impressive, especially given the small team size and lack of funding. Rockstar should embrace the modding community’s potential, especially considering the long wait for GTA VI and the perceived shortcomings of the official remasters and they have a big incentive to as they can earn a ton of money off it too.
The showcase of the mod and the original video:
-VIA Some Ordinary Gamers
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