At the close of 2024, the World Travel modding team released the Liberty City Preservation Project for Grand Theft Auto V, a fan-made modification that reintroduces Liberty City from GTA IV into the GTA V world. The launch drew broad attention from players eager to explore the city again within a modern Rockstar title. After a period of public reception, the developers removed the project following direct outreach to Rockstar Games, a step reported by DTF as initiating the decision to halt distribution.
The project was developed over roughly six years and quickly earned a devoted following among GTA fans who praised its technical quality and its faithful recreation of Liberty City’s districts, weather, and traffic patterns. Many players viewed the mod as one of the most impressive fan creations for GTA V, fueling conversations about compatibility, stability, and how large-scale city ports fit into an evolving game ecosystem. In mid-January, the creators announced they would finalize the project and wind down ongoing development, thanking supporters and noting that finishing the work would preserve the original vision.
From the outset, the World Travel team emphasized that the amount of interest exceeded expectations. They explained that the halt came after an open dialogue with Rockstar and that stepping back would help avoid potential conflicts. The decision included removing download links and ensuring that no new copies would be circulated, a move the team described as necessary to protect both their creative process and the broader modding community.
They stated there was no personal dispute with Rockstar Games and that their intention was to continue creating mods for GTA titles in the future. However, the exact grounds for Rockstar’s concerns were not publicly detailed, leaving fans to speculate about IP boundaries, asset reuse, and the limits of fan-made content within official game ecosystems.
DTF noted that in 2017 Rockstar’s developers requested the closure of a similar Liberty City port project for GTA V, illustrating a precedent in publisher intervention when fan projects touch on major game worlds. This context helps readers understand why the current situation received careful attention from both the community and the publisher.
As the story of the Liberty City Preservation Project shows, fan preservation can meet publisher scrutiny. Some commentators have floated the idea that raising GTA VI’s price could benefit the wider industry by funding ambitious mods and continued development, a perspective that has circulated in industry chatter. The focus here, however, rests on rights and practical realities of re-creating a major city inside an official game world, not on market strategy, and the GTA modding community remains hopeful that clear guidelines and respectful publisher collaboration will allow future city-scale projects to endure within legal and technical boundaries.