The Grand Theft Auto V Steam store page is being flooded with negative reviews as fans of the franchise are learning about actions taken against the development team behind the Grand Theft Auto V modding tool OpenIV.

We received word earlier today that the publisher of the open world action-adventure game franchise Grand Theft Auto, Take-Two Interactive, has sent a cease-and-desist letter to the developers of the popular modding tool OpenIV.

The modding tool is used by thousands of modders around the world to open and edit the files of the Rockstar Games titles Grand Theft Auto IV, Grand Theft Auto V and Max Payne 3.

According to Take-Two Interactive, the modding tool "allows third parties to defeat security features of its software and modify that software in violation of Take-Two's rights."

The modding tool was released almost ten years ago and has received hundreds of updates since its release in late 2008.

Over the past few years Grand Theft Auto franchise developer Rockstar Games and its publisher Take-Two Interactive have increased its efforts to try and stop game modders, even going as far as to force developers of free and custom multiplayer modifications to stop development entirely.

The Grand Theft Auto franchise became popular because of the many modifications that are available for the games. Since the first game, Grand Theft Auto, which released in 1997 for PC and PlayStation 1, gamers have created and shared millions of modifications online.

Now players are taking their anger and frustration to the game's Steam store review section where they have already left hundreds of negative reviews since the news broke roughly three hours ago.

In the last hour Take-Two Interactive stock has taken a slight drop, though whether that drop is directly related to the actions taken by the company is questionable because the publisher's stock price has been steadily increasing over the past year.

The Steam community was also down for a short period of time following the news, whether that event is directly related is also unknown.

Video game publishers and developers going after modders apppears to be increasing in popularity and frequency.

Back in March of 2017 we reported on a cease-and-desist letter that forced a large database of Cheat Engine memory table files offline. Cheat Engine is the most popular software memory scanner in the world.

Update #1: The upcoming "Liberty City in GTAV" total conversion modification has also been forced to stop development.

Update #2: The Grand Theft Auto V Steam store page is now displaying the red "Mostly Negative" label for recent user reviews.

Update #3: Contradictory to what other publications are reporting, we have yet to receive an official response from Rockstar Games.

Update #4: Another group of Grand Theft Auto modders is reportedly planning to protest in their own way by releasing a database of 70,000 allegedly removed Rockstar Games Newswire comments.