ferrari grotti x80

In Red Dead 2, was Rockstar unable to get the copyright permission to use the actual names of the old guns from the modern still living companies, or were they deciding to use made up substitutes for personal reasons?

Use GTA 5 and GTA Online as an example. For the cars in GTA Online, they never use actual cars in their base game, but mostly cars that highly (like, really highly) resemble their real life counterparts. Ferrari F80 Concept supercar Grotti X80 Proto, the counterpart of the aforementioned supercar. Note the minimal difference between the cars. The reason is due to the fact that car companies wouldn’t really want to be part of the criminal enterprise in GTA. Which is understandable, since which company would want their car to be featured on a game that is essentially about murder and get rich via illegal activities. If somehow they do, Rockstar will Have to pay royalty towards the companies they’ve referred to. This is self explanatory, and if they do have to pay royalty, that is gonna be massive due to how much cars did Rockstar include in GTA V. Have to accept the additional rules/clauses the car company includes in their agreement. This above is generally another dealbreaker other than Reason 1. You see, one of the major spotlights of GTA V is vehicle destruction. A horribly wrecked Sabre Turbo. Newer cars usually don’t get wrecked as horribly as the older cars do before they blow up, but nonetheless. The problem is due to branding and imaging issues, some car companies actually refrain filming companies to even feature their licensed cars damaged. You got it, ,damaged,, not even wrecked. Obviously this is not gonna work well with GTA, and even if Rockstar did want to pay for the license this would be in direct conflict with the game itself. For the guns in the game, the reason mostly is pretty much just branding and royalty issues. It would be acceptable to assume Red Dead Redemption also did the same and features lookalikes rather than the licensed counterparts.