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Wednesday, December 14, 2016

Grand Theft Auto IV Just Got Patched

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - No, that's not a typo. For the first time in six years!

According to what “universal acclaim” means, everyone out there is a fan of the eight-year-old Grand Theft Auto IV. Sure, WE haven't mentioned it at all on this site, but that doesn't discount how everyone loves the game without a doubt.

Well, unless you were trying to play it on a PC for the past couple of years. Then you might not have even been able to play it.

Grand Theft Auto IV Steam Powered user reviews PC version
Taken from Grand Theft Auto IV's page on Steam. Note the user reviews.

I guess it's a testament to the game that even though it was reportedly unplayable, it still got mixed reviews. I mean, it could've gotten much worse, right? Grand Theft Auto IV was always fine if you were on a Windows 7 (and had appropriate system requirements), but it was never future-proofed. It's finally been available for the present a couple of weeks ago, where it was patched to be usable for Windows 8, 8.1, and Windows 10! This was the first patch since 2010, and obviously the first patch done since Grand Theft Auto V was released years later in 2013. (Which I said was going to ruin the industry, and I don't think I was wrong in my message.)

There's still something that's required for Grand Theft Auto IV on PC called “Gaming For Windows Live” that I've never even heard of. But upon some research, encapsulated in this How-To Geek article, it appears that PC gamers despised Gaming For Windows Live, or GFWL. This was forced upon Grand Theft Auto IV for the PC back in the day, and it's an outdated and deprecated piece of garbage that sucked even when it was released. It's not really important about what value-added features it had at the time, because it only subtracts value right now. It's been abandoned by Microsoft for a while now, but Rockstar Games did not patch the GFWL requirements out.

So while Grand Theft Auto IV will run on your recent hardware, it'll still be hampered in some way.

Windows 8 has been out for years, and Windows 10 has been out for almost a year and a half. Why did Rockstar randomly decide now to update Grand Theft Auto IV? Probably because the news will help get them a random increase in sales of Grand Theft Auto IV, and it's three years after Grand Theft Auto V came out, so sales of its prequel probably will no longer be in the position to cannibalise it anymore. At least they aren't re-releasing it as a “remaster.”

I, for one, have always been wary and weary of proprietary digital rights management (DRM) schemes cooked up by various companies. You see it more on PC than on console, but you have stuff like Uplay from Ubisoft and EA Origins from Electronic Arts running around that is specific for those companies and are an unnecessary layer of complexity. I hate them and I won't buy any game with them.

(...Now watch a company I actually like start implementing that.) 


This article was a request that Ludwig accepted because he thought it would be a nice break from all of the mobile-related bashing that you've been seeing on KoopaTV lately. Back before there was mobile to bash, it was PC gaming! You're free to submit requests through the Requests page as well!


Ludwig successfully avoided the scourge of the Windows 10 auto-updater.
Compatibility testing is a major pain for PC gaming, and one reason why Ludwig prefers console development.
The very next day, Ludwig goes back to mobile-bashing.
If Grand Theft Auto IV can get patched, then can Grand Theft Auto V get single-player DLC?

4 comments :

  1. I see that the "wary and weary" thing is spreading! I appear to have made my mark!

    Mwahahahahahahahaha!

    Honestly, though, I'm glad that I don't delve into the seemingly complicated world of PC gaming. It seem to me that half the time one spends while gaming on a computer is setting up settings, checking for compatibility, creating new accounts for different games, or things like that. Even though many people say that consoles are becoming more like PCs (especially concerning Xbox and PlayStation), I still appreciate the simplicity of having one set of games with a fixed rate of performance and a unified online architecture.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ...yeah, good job, I guess.

      Wendy on our staff actually is pretty much only a PC gamer (and she's expressed she wants KoopaTV to cover it as a non-joke), so she's welcome to refute everything you and I are writing here.

      Delete
    2. A fixed rate of low end performance *

      Delete
    3. About time you commented on this article, since YOU requested it.

      Delete

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