A court in the US has blocked from sale two tools used primarily for cheating in GTA Online. The judge awarded Take-Two Interactive a preliminary injunction against the tools’ creator, Georgia resident David Zipperer, that prevents him from selling his creations.
The tools in question are two trainer mods called Menyoo and Absolute, which allow users to alter various things in-game such as spawning weapons and cars. They were, and still are, available for free for use in the single-player side of GTA5, but the GTA Online versions of the mods had to be purchased with real money.
While this doesn’t matter offline, GTA Online is extremely profitable for Rockstar and Take-Two, so they come down strongly on any attempt to circumvent or cheat the system. Force Hax, a similar program used for cheating in GTA Online, was shut down in June 2017. They previously sent a cease-and-desist letter to popular GTA mod program OpenIV, and only relented after fan backlash.
That will not be happening here, however, according to Reuters. Take-Two claim that these cheating tools had cost the company at least $500,000, not just from losing out on real-money purchases – if you can spawn any vehicle for free, why would you buy them? – but also due to the griefing cheaters caused for other players.
US District Judge Luis Stratton agreed, awarding the injunction and officially banning Zipperer from selling the trainers. Stratton said it was not only “likely” that Zipperer infringed Take-Two’s copyright, his mods also could cause “irreparable harm to its sales and reputation” by putting people off playing GTA Online.
Take-Two added in a statement that it would keep pursuing legal action against cheat makers like Zipperer in order to avert “disruptions” to its multiplayer gaming community.