The team of people working on Multi Theft Auto, the popular modification that brought multiplayer functionality to GTA III, Vice City and most recently, San Andreas, have announced that it has now become an open source project.


Exciting news for those of you who still enjoy playing a bit of San Andreas multiplayer, and also those of you who are interested in contributing code to the project. The MTA Team are utilising the services of Google Code to house all development, other facilities are available via the MTA community page.

No new release yet of course, the latest currently available is Developer Preview 2.3, and you can download that version here.

You can read more about MTA going open source over at MultiTheftAuto.com.

Following on from last week's announcement, GTA: San Andreas is now available for download through the Xbox Originals service on the Xbox Live Marketplace, priced at 1200 points - currently equal to £10.20 (or $15 USD).

Originally announced for North America only, the download is actually available in the following countries: Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom and United States.

Microsoft has announced that the next title to be added to the Xbox Originals download service will be Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The game will be available to download on October 20th in North America - there is currently no release date for other regions. The download will cost 1200 Microsoft Points, which equates to just over £10 ($14.99 in USD).

There is also no word on whether or not any of the other games in the series will appear on the Xbox Live Marketplace.

Links: MCV
GTA San Andreas on Xbox.com

Out of the millions of people eligible for a refund of GTA San Andreas after the Hot Coffee scandal, less than 3000 people have come forward to collect their money.

After disabled, inaccessible sex scenes were found to be able to be reactivated by a third-party modification a couple of years ago, this resulted in public outrage, widespread condemnation and a handful of lawsuits being thrown at Rockstar's parent company Take Two. In 2007 they agreed to exchange any v1 copy of GTA San Andreas for a 'fixed' v2, or offer a refund of $35 if they have proof that they purchased v1.

Now months later, only 2,676 people have claimed their refund, in spite of millions of individuals having the right to a payout. Take Two were shocked at that result, and the plaintiffs' lawyer is "disappointed", and doesn't understand why people don't care. This has prompted people to claim that the case was blown out of proportion, and shouldn't have been brought to court at all.

So it turns out that people perhaps are more tolerant of sexual content after all, or realised the effort you had to go through to access the content. Perhaps the all that controversy, outrage and hysteria was just some lawyers trying to cash in on the most successful game franchise ever.

Source: NYTimes

I wasn’t planning on making any more San Andreas mods, however May 22, 2008, was my wife’s birthday so I decided to make her something special. She has stood by me through all of my modding and 3D modeling, and understands more about game mechanics / 3D modeling from just having to live with me than anyone who doesn’t enjoy the work that goes into making these free mods should know! The mod takes the Rustler plane from San Andreas and attaches a birthday banner to the back of it. You can also change the banner texture included and make your own banners to fly behind the plane.