Looking back at the GTA: San Andreas remade in Unreal fan trailer a year after Take-Two nuked it

This week, Kotaku reported Rockstar is working on remastered versions of Grand Theft Auto 3, Grand Theft Auto Vice City, and Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, using Unreal Engine to create a mix of "new and old graphics".

The news helps explain Rockstar parent company Take-Two Interactive's recent GTA mod takedown spree - particular mods that recreated the games in question.

But it also helps explain why Rockstar nuked a San Andreas fan remake trailer in July 2020, too.

Last summer, Eurogamer reported on a fan-made trailer showing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas "remade" in Unreal Engine 4. It was simply that: a trailer, not a game or a mod of any kind. And yet, Take-Two nuked it from YouTube, issuing a takedown claiming copyright infringement.

The three-person team behind the trailer, collectively called ArcadiaSquad, even pulled their Patreon.

ArcadiaSquad ended up reuploading the video to its YouTube channel at the end of May this year, this time with a hefty disclaimer admitting their naivety with the original release. At the time of this article's publication, the video remains online.

Here's the disclaimer:

"This video was uploaded on July 10, 2020. Due to copyright problems and misunderstandings it was removed. That project originally paid tribute to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, just a fan-made concept of what the game would be like in a modern graphics engine. That said, we have decided to re-upload this video on this channel and hope that this time such serious measures are not applied again (considering all the replications of similar projects on the internet).

"We are not going to release anything related to this project. So, we insist, we will host this video as such: just a simple video. And to avoid any future issues, we are not going to monetize this particular video.

"At that time, we were a bit stupid and did not ask for the respective permissions, that's another reason we are not going to monetise."

Looking back at the video now, with reports of San Andreas being remade in Unreal being an actual reality at Rockstar front of mind, it's fun to imagine it gives us an indication of how the official release may look. To create the video, ArcadiaSquad used assets from the original San Andreas as well as mods and assets from the Unreal Engine Marketplace.

Rockstar has yet to respond to Kotaku's report, but given Take-Two's recent confirmation it has three unannounced "new iterations of previously released titles" in the works, this one seems nailed on.

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