Take-Two nukes GTA: San Andreas fan remake trailer
Caught between Rockstar and a hard place.
When a trailer for a fan-made remake of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas burst onto the scene earlier this month, many thought it was too good to be true. And it was, in a sense: as while the trailer displayed a "remade" version of San Andreas in Unreal Engine 4, the project was merely a tool to create Machinima videos, and the team behind the trailer announced they had no plans to release a fully playable remake.
Still, it was enough to get people very excited about the idea of a remake for the nearly 16-year-old game. Until the Take-Two lawyers arrived.
Take a peep at the link for the original trailer now, and you'll discover that the video has been removed due to a copyright claim by Take-Two Interactive. As noted by YouTuber Swegta, the channel was previously filled with information about the team, including links to their Facebook and Patreon, all of which has now vanished. The Patreon itself is now marked as "under review", while the Facebook page has been removed.
If you want to take a look at the original trailer, you'll now have to access it through the uploads of others on YouTube, such as the one below at 02:23.
According to the Patreon description, ArcadiaSquad consisted of a group of three friends from Argentina who wanted to reimagine what old games would look like if given a remake (via LadBible). Take-Two is notoriously litigious when it comes to protecting its intellectual property, last year shutting down a Red Dead Redemption PC fan project, and reportedly sending investigators to the homes of a Borderlands 3 YouTuber and GTA 5 modder. It's unclear whether Take-Two demanded the removal of all pages related to the project, but it does seem even the promise of avoiding public release wasn't enough to save ArcadiaSquad.