Take-Two Interactive has shut down one of the most ambitious Red Dead Redemption 2 mods ever. Rockstar Games’ owner has sent a cease-and-desist to the modder known as Rixus, ordering him to pull the Nuevo Paraíso mod, subtitled The Forgotten Frontier, from Nexus Mods. The page is already gone, less than two months after it went up.
The mod was a big deal. Built by Rixus724 and the Mexico Team, it restored the Mexico region that players roamed in the original Red Dead Redemption, rebuilt for RDR2 and its 1907 world. It brought back towns like Escalera and Chuparosa, added wildlife and activities from treasure hunts to train heists and fort defense, then tied it all to the map with a working railway. It released on September 16 and quickly drew downloads and coverage.
Rixus said on his Ko-fi page that he received a cease-and-desist from Take-Two requiring him to remove every mod containing Red Dead Redemption material, including this one and others still in development. His Nexus Mods page now reads “Removed by author.” He thanked his supporters and said the project is over.
This did not come out of nowhere. Days before the mod launched, Rockstar Games published updated mod guidelines that restrict exactly this kind of project, combining maps, characters and assets from one Rockstar game into another, or altering a game’s story and continuity. A mod that imports Red Dead Redemption‘s Mexico into RDR2 sits squarely in the prohibited column.
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| September 10, 2026 | Rockstar publishes its updated mod guidelines |
| September 16, 2026 | Nuevo Paraíso releases on Nexus Mods, by Rixus724 |
| Late September to October | The mod gains downloads and coverage, patched for stability |
| Early November 2026 | Rixus receives a Take-Two cease-and-desist |
| Around November 9 to 11 | The Nexus page is removed by the author, the mod reuploaded elsewhere |
Within days, the mod reappeared on an alternative host, AyakaMods, after community calls to rehost it. Others have mirrored it too. Still, calling this a blanket anti-mod stance overstates it. Take-Two allows plenty of modding. Its guidelines target cross-game content and story changes rather than mods as a whole and the trouble for projects like this one is that rebuilding an entire region from another game is exactly what the rules forbid.
For the modding scene, the message is chilling. The most ambitious Red Dead projects, the ones that restore cut content or bridge the two games, are now the ones most likely to draw a letter. Rixus spent years on Nuevo Paraíso and watched it vanish in a week. Whether that scares off the next big restoration mod, or simply pushes it to hosts Take-Two cannot reach, is a valid question to ask.
Make RDR2.org a preferred source
See more from RDR2.org in Google Search.
