Rockstar releases update for GTA IV that nerfs the radio stations

Cal Jeffrey

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Grand Theft Auto IV turns 10 in just a few days. That birthday also comes with the unfortunate gift of licensing expirations — specifically regarding the game’s soundtrack.

Rockstar announced that it would be removing many songs from GTA IV with a patch that went rolled out today. Several tracks from the Russian radio station Vladivostok FM will be removed, which somewhat ironic being that the game’s protagonist Niko Bellic is Russian. Fortunately, Rockstar is replacing the songs with other Russian tunes, but without iconic tracks like Glukoza’s “Schweine” and Ruslana’s “Wild Dances,” the station will just not be the same.

Other songs that are getting the ax include The Smashing Pumpkins “1979,” David Bowie’s “Fascination,” and Stevie Nicks' "Edge of Seventeen." Posters to the GTA forums have been posting lists of removed and added songs by digging through the patch.

Rockstar had this to say about the update:

"Due to music licensing restrictions, we are required to remove certain songs from the in-game soundtrack of Grand Theft Auto IV and its Episodes, in particular a large portion of the Russian pop station, Vladivostok FM. However we are replacing some of those songs with a new set of songs on that station. We will update our customer support website with new information as soon as it is available."

The removal of songs from GTA games is nothing new. According to Kotaku, GTA: Vice City and San Andreas both received patches removing songs at about the 10-year mark. What made players mad the last time around was Rockstar slipped them the San Andreas patch without letting them know that it would remove some of the music. At least this time players have been forewarned.

Nonetheless, players will not be able to skip the update to keep the original soundtrack — at least not officially. It is not difficult for developers to brick an unpatched title, especially on consoles. They do it all the time by not letting the game start until the newest patch is installed.

However, players with physical editions of the game might be able to avoid the patch by being sure that their consoles are offline before starting up the game.

For PC, some users have already reported that by keeping their Steam accounts offline and making backups of specific game data, they were able to go ahead and replace the corresponding files in the patch.

Many fans are mad about the changes and have even accused Rockstar of “being greedy” for not updating the licensing, but realistically, how long can you expect a game developer to keep shelling out on a 10-year-old title that only has a handful of players left?

Personally, I love GTA IV and think it is far superior to GTA V, but even so, I have not played as Nico Bellic in well over five years. And honestly, changing the soundtrack is not going to break what is already a great game.

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Damn it, my game just updated when I turned on my PC... I guess it doesn't really matter as I haven't played the game in nearly 5 years, at least 5 years. I do however have the original discs laying around somewhere for it if I wanted to source the original files.

Now, how does this licensing affect games that can't be digitally updated, this is the first I hear of such a problem regarding video games, I also find it hard to believe GTA:SA and Vice City on my PS2 could have the songs removed from them, it must be a new console and PC thing.
 
I know that for Westerners everything east of Berlin is "Russia", but We are a bunch of difference nations. Sometimes so much so that We fight wars between ourselfs. Nico is actually a Serb of former Yugoslavia and most probably the problems He got in to back in a day was involvement in a Yugoslavian civil war if I recall correctly. Smugling weapons or people or both.
 
"how long can you expect a game developer to keep shelling out on a 10-year-old title that only has a handful of players left?"

I would play it if they patched the PC version. Last time I tried it went to some GFWL limbo. Never buying rockstar products again and that's a shame as I have bought every GTA on playstations and PC, I was a real fanboy but their focus on microtrans, banning of innocent players, disinterest in fixing the hacking problems and overall shitty mentality towards customers really turns me off. GTA 4 was probably my favorite game of the series and I would love to play it again in 4k and 100+ fps but I can't until they port it to phones and after that they port the mobile port to PC. Did it ever even work on PC? I remember it was unoptimized **** and when people got powerful enough PCs to run such crappy code GFWL went down and bricked the game for years (probably to this day). It's a shame you can sell lies (sean murray) or just broken products (rockstar) and you wont even get punished, if any car manufacturer did the same they would get sued to oblivion, heck even if you bought a bluray movie and it didn't work people would get compensation. Just because something is digital it shouldn't mean you can scam people.
 
"how long can you expect a game developer to keep shelling out on a 10-year-old title that only has a handful of players left?"

I would play it if they patched the PC version. Last time I tried it went to some GFWL limbo. Never buying rockstar products again and that's a shame as I have bought every GTA on playstations and PC, I was a real fanboy but their focus on microtrans, banning of innocent players, disinterest in fixing the hacking problems and overall shitty mentality towards customers really turns me off. GTA 4 was probably my favorite game of the series and I would love to play it again in 4k and 100+ fps but I can't until they port it to phones and after that they port the mobile port to PC. Did it ever even work on PC? I remember it was unoptimized **** and when people got powerful enough PCs to run such crappy code GFWL went down and bricked the game for years (probably to this day). It's a shame you can sell lies (sean murray) or just broken products (rockstar) and you wont even get punished, if any car manufacturer did the same they would get sued to oblivion, heck even if you bought a bluray movie and it didn't work people would get compensation. Just because something is digital it shouldn't mean you can scam people.

No issues on my machine and it's an old machine (AMD Phenom II X3 720BE) with a GeForce 560 video card. Runs pretty darn well at 1920x1080 for me with mostly high settings. Might have been driver issues, etc. I think they've fixed most of the bugs since then, but I was always able to run it on my machine.
 
Man this was a fun game... I've played it completely through three times. Last was less than a year ago, so I probably won't want to try it again for at least another year or two. Sucks about the music licensing. Can't get some sort of infinite time license? Ridiculous...

Music licensing is bullcrap anyway just a bunch of greedy a$$hats driving that bus. Screw'em. Besides I already got "illegal" mp3 copies of the Russian songs so there.
 
I could care less about the game for it's exceedingly sinful nature, but yanking content out of a game is ridiculous. The game was sold as having it. How about refunds to customers for removing a selling feature?

This is like pulling soundtracks out of the original Doom or any other game. I don't care if it was released just a few weeks ago. Really? So, again, we fight against the MPAA/RIAA?? That industry just needs to die.
 
I know that for Westerners everything east of Berlin is "Russia", but We are a bunch of difference nations. Sometimes so much so that We fight wars between ourselfs. Nico is actually a Serb of former Yugoslavia and most probably the problems He got in to back in a day was involvement in a Yugoslavian civil war if I recall correctly. Smugling weapons or people or both.
Yes you are absolutely correct, sir. That was my bad. As I said in the article it has been at least five years since I played the game so the details were fuzzy. But yeah, he was Serbian.
 
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