Grand Theft Auto IV Now Available

Evo

Evo

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Grand Theft Auto IV is now available in North America and "Down Under" (as the Steam news piece says) and will be available for European customers in approximately an hour and a quarter or midnight GMT.

Notes:
$39.99 in UK
Australian version unedited
SecuROM is on there - no install limits
Games for Windows Live and Rockstar Social Club required
 
Great, this is perfect.
Can't wait for this excellent game.
 
Woo, i'm going to stay up till midnight to download this. It's 15 gig!! God this is goin to take forever.
 
Damn SecuROM... keeping me from playing a growing list of, from what I hear, good games.
 
Woo! Just bought it (and got Vice City too!). Can't wait to get back to my main computer to install it.
This will be a lazy christmas indeed.
 
Even on my 1-3mb/s uni connection this is taking forever to download.
 
The Steam version is like 15.6gb
 
3%! Which is coincidently around the percentage of the game I completed when I played on the 360, I'll try harder this time \o/
 
7% and 1 day and 14 hours left.

:|

Daaaaamn this is a big game!
 
Bought the retail, wish I had spent that $50 on something else. I get absolute SHIT performance. I mean seriously, I can put it on low settings on 1024x768 and no AA and it still plays like shit, like FPS in the 20-30 range. What the ****? My PC is by no means a slouch (e6600 2.4ghz, 8800GTX, 2GB of RAM, XP SP3), it handles Far Cry 2 and just about any other game just fine, hell even Crysis played better than this. What a garbage port. And not to mention all of the shitware they bundle with the game, why the hell do I NEED "Games for Windows Live" and "Rockstar Social Club" to play the ****ing game? And of course there's also the Securom bullshit...

I figured Rockstar deserved my money since I've always been impressed with the rest of the GTA titles on PC, I've bought them all. But this will be the last one.

/rant
 
diluted said:
Bought the retail, wish I had spent that $50 on something else. I get absolute SHIT performance. I mean seriously, I can put it on low settings on 1024x768 and no AA and it still plays like shit, like FPS in the 20-30 range. What the ****? My PC is by no means a slouch (e6600 2.4ghz, 8800GTX, 2GB of RAM, XP SP3), it handles Far Cry 2 and just about any other game just fine, hell even Crysis played better than this. What a garbage port. And not to mention all of the shitware they bundle with the game, why the hell do I NEED "Games for Windows Live" and "Rockstar Social Club" to play the ****ing game? And of course there's also the Securom bullshit...

I figured Rockstar deserved my money since I've always been impressed with the rest of the GTA titles on PC, I've bought them all. But this will be the last one.

/rant
Click to expand...

Seems to be the problem most people are having judging by other forums. When I played it on 360 it felt like it was running at 30fps most of the time....
 
cant play it for shit, the game won't let me set my view distance to anything greater than 1
 
I should've known to steer clear of this when the recommended system requirements lists a ****ing Quad Core for the CPU...

So I guess this is the new Crysis, a game designed for hardware that doesn't exist yet.
 
I cant even get it to begin downloading.
 
I would advise anybody that doesn't have a kickass brand new top of the line system to not buy this game. It's dreadfully unoptimized and also extremely buggy. Hopefully Rockstar will get their act together and roll out some patches, but they really screwed this one up.
 
I heard they were already working on a patch.
 
SecuROM and these complaints are making me reconsider what was a definite purchase. Sounds like an incredibly lazy port with a little consumer contempt sprinkled on top for good measure.
 
Damn i've already brought it and now i read this. Oh well you live and learn, maybe my quad core will save my X1900XTX from dying :D
 
So there is SecuROM but no install limits and you (people in general) are still complaining? Wow :O

Still downloading, will be here for a while. Not expecting good performance from what you are all saying!
 
Evo said:
So there is SecuROM but no install limits and you (people in general) are still complaining? Wow :O
Click to expand...
As I've always said, the issue of how many problems it causes to you as an individual is not the point. The point, as Gabe Newell just pointed out, is the one of being given what is essentially an inferior product with no added incentive to buy. There is always the possibility of SecuROM related screw-ups which are completely unrelated to install limits, as many hapless buyers discover every time a DRM-tainted game is released.

As well, some of the (non-Steam) digital download versions do have a concurrent install limit of 5.
 
Laivasse said:
As I've always said, the issue of how many problems it causes to you as an individual is not the point. The point, as Gabe Newell just pointed out, is the one of being given what is essentially an inferior product with no added incentive to buy. There is always the possibility of SecuROM related screw-ups which are completely unrelated to install limits, as many hapless buyers discover every time a DRM-tainted game is released.
Click to expand...

That is true, but I fear that many people will go 'argh DRM/SecuROM hate hate' without considering that the implementation is different from game to game. I'm against having SecuROM though, don't get me wrong ;)

I think the bigger issue for GTAIV is the need to run GfWL, R* Social Club and if necessary Steam. Ugh!
 
Evo said:
I think the bigger issue for GTAIV is the need to run GfWL, R* Social Club and if necessary Steam. Ugh!
Click to expand...
Speaking pragmatically, that does sound like a bigger headache than SecuROM in this instance.
 
The fact that, as I've already pointed out, you're getting an inferior product to the one you would get with no SecuROM present, requiring you to jump through hoops that wouldn't exist otherwise (online authentication, different authorisation required per windows user, authorisation required upon change of hardware profile, having an extra background process running, etc.). Then there's the possibility that, as I've also just mentioned, SecuROM will cause problems unrelated to install limits just as other iterations of SecuROM have done in the past, such as conflicting with certain blacklisted software, causing drives to malfunction, and being difficult to uninstall/there being no explicit uninstall feature.
 
I can't buy it off Steam, it's not available here.
I might download it sometime...
 
screw you all..

Damn those developers, and their country-selecting antics
 
Kirkburn said:
How is GTA's SecuROM a headache in the first place?
Click to expand...

I had an issue with Mass Effect's SecuROM which is the same as GTA's, in which when downloading the DLC i found that every time i right clicked on a Exe or a shortcut to an exe Windows Explorer would crash. It then turns up that in DLc it had updated SecuROM and it was messing around adding itself to the Windows shell. This for me was unacceptable as this copy protection WAS harming my PC. My issue with SecuROM is i don't know exactly what it's doing or adding itself onto.

This is the last Rockstar port i ever buy, i should have learned after seeing Bully. But seeing that they were working on the port of GTA4 since January i believed it would be ok, how wrong could i have been. Feels like Rockstar worked to squeeze every bit of performance outta the console to make it look as good as possible, then decided they couldn't be arsed doing the same for the PC and instead say you'll need future hardware, disgraceful.
 
PimpinPenguin said:
Woo, i'm going to stay up till midnight to download this. It's 15 gig!! God this is goin to take forever.
Click to expand...

15 GB's?!?! What the hell?!?!
Jeez, I'll better wait for the original version to come in the game shop, near my house.
 
Do not buy it until Rockstar addresses the memory leaks and performance issues. If they do at all.
 
http://hellforge.gameriot.com/blogs/Random-Ravings/20-Easy-Steps-to-Starting-GTA-IV-on-Your-PC
* The crash-to-desktop bug is rampant, a "fatal zlib20 error". No known solution yet.
* Securom must be running at all times while the game is running. Closing it results in the game closing too.
* SecuROM will often crash, resulting in your game not starting at all. [How's that for a 'headache'?]
* The reason the menu screen was black for me for so long is because it must download a file every time you start the game, since the menu background is actually an online updating news page.
* The newest Geforce Drivers: version 180.48, are not compatible with GTA IV.
* The Windows Live update supports Vista 32bit only. If you have Windows Vista 64bit, you can not play.
* The game does not support, nor recognise, SLI card set ups of any of the Geforce 8600 or 8800 card series.
Click to expand...
That is just... man. Can anyone confirm the Vista64 thing? Because that is just a ****ing joke if true, whether it's a temporary problem or not.
gamespot forums poster said:
actually i finally got mine working but i had to spend another bloody $100 [that's singapore dollars] to get a new dvd drive cause securom wouldnt allow my original dvd drive to read it anyways if you want screenshot i can get them but gimme a minute...
Click to expand...

Someone order some broken DRM...?
 
Laivasse said:
http://hellforge.gameriot.com/blogs/Random-Ravings/20-Easy-Steps-to-Starting-GTA-IV-on-Your-PCThat is just... man. Can anyone confirm the Vista64 thing? Because that is just a ****ing joke if true, whether it's a temporary problem or not.
Click to expand...

A lot of that is bullshit. Im playing it fine with vista x64. The crash to desktop thing is because of rockstar's social club thing. You just dont sign in and it works. You can play without it. So obviously there IS a known solution already.

I bought it off steam, so I dont know if it has the securom at all, but i havent run into any problems if it does.

One thing to keep in mind is that you need a windows live account to save your game. HOWEVER you can make offline accounts, which is essentially just a "profile" system like hundreds of other games have.

As for performance, i was pretty surprised. Heres my benchmark.

Statistics
Average FPS: 36.32
Duration: 37.61 sec
CPU Usage: 67%
System memory usage: 42%
Video memory usage: 76%

Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1680 x 1050 (60 Hz)
Texture Quality: Medium
Render Quality: High
View Distance: 52
Detail Distance: 37

Hardware
Microsoft? Windows Vista" Ultimate
Service Pack 1
Video Adapter: ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series
Video Driver version: 7.14.10.618
Audio Adapter: Speakers (2- SB Audigy)
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz
 
Yeesh...I was so looking forward to this, too. GTA3 was fantastic on PC...

:(

EDIT: Well Krynn made it seem a bit better, but I don't have a quad core, haha...
 
Krynn, that benchmark does give me some hope that I'll be able to run this game. By no means do I have a slouch of a system, with a Phenom 9750(Quad Core 2.4GHz, so probably comparatively powerful), 4 gigs of DDR2, and a HD4850. So I'm hoping for it to work smoothly(enough).

I've still got about 9 hours left of my download, and I've been downloading it for the last maybe 28 hours. Yay for 1 Mb connections.

As for the Securom thing, I've played a bunch of games with some sort of DRM, and I've never had a problem, so I'm not overly afraid of this. Having to install GFWL and that Social Club thing(which I'm guessing is where you upload your videos or whatever) is bullshit, though. I buy my games through Steam so I can get all the functionality and more of GFWL without having to actually use it, as I've always seen it as kind of a hassle. As for the Social Club, I don't get why it's not an optional install.

Anyway, in 9 hours time the fate of the rest of this year will be decided(I never played this when my brother got it for his PS3 for a reason, and this is it).

Maybe I should buy a controller for this one. What do you guys think?
 
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