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Grand Theft Auto Released For Free
Snover writes "It's already incredibly difficult to actually get to the site due to its extreme popularity, and can only get worse after the inevitable slashdotting, but Rockstar Games has updated their original hit, Grand Theft Auto, to run on 'modern' computers and released it for free to the public. It'd be nice if more gaming companies did this! Unfortunately, it (of course) is Windows-only and utilises the propietary DirectX API, but hey, free game for anyone that's paid the Microsoft tax! (The download speed, once you actually manage to connect to the site, is quite excellent -- it's maxing out my 2Mbps connection.)" Ah, what a classic game.
I've seen the opposite happen, where games are first freeware, then changed to a shareware or other license because they realized all the oodles of cash they could make off of it. I don't think that is a good practice and if more companies follow Rockstar's exmaple, they will have many more happy gamers that will gladly support their other products by purchasing them legitimately.
Ahh...the memories.
Since nobody around here really gives a crap about what the various companies think anywho, would someone please put this up on Kazaa or one of the other P2P networks? If we can make a habit of doing this when binaries are available then future /.ings might be somewhat abated.
How does a summary of a story about a free game become a microsoft bashing opportunity?
This is just about the most childish story post I have ever seen Hemos.
Anyone else think these kinds of games are partly the reason why we're going to invade Iraq, North Korea, and various African countries once we're done there?
Nope. We were fighting wars long before video game came about; they just make us good at using the drones.
Violence breed violence and encourages hate. Why do we love to hate?
Because hate encourages violence, they hate us, and thus they visit violence upon us and we visit violence upon them.
This is why "love thy enemy" is such an important part of our culture. We bomb Afghanistan out of the stone age, and then hold their hand as they struggle to sort out all the damage their ex-ruler did. We did the same thing with Japan and Germany, and we'll do the same thing with Iraq.
but people are playing the exact same games everywhere else in the world (the guys who did GTA are Scottish, BTW). Yet for some reason you don't see Scotland bombing every little country they can get away with, do you? Violent video games are not the reason.
Or do you think Saddam Hussein started making WMD's after too many rounds of Command & Conquer..?
What these guys have finally realized is that a game's value to its creator is first (obviously) as a revenue generator, but after newer versions have obsoleted the old product, it's more useful in terms of marketing as a giveaway. I for one, haven't ever purchased any of these games, but I'll give this a try, and who knows, they might just pick up a new customer. Enlightened self-interest works again!
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I hate this term. Goddamn do I hate this term. I paid $200 retail for my copy of windows 2000 and I have not had it crash on me or throttle my data with a stick. All I've done to it is install patches. In the same time, my friend's dumped about 500 hours into his linux box, with an additional 1-10 hours every time he wants to install something new, checking contingencies, updating each library one at a time, and all from a prompt.
Look, I'm a developer. I've written software for everything from a pocket pc to an as/400 adn that's included some work in linux. It's a nice unix. But it doesn't bridge the essential gap into the home market: it doesn't let me do what I want to do (like, say, play GTA) without forcing me to learn a whole bunch of things I shouldn't need to learn. A home user shouldn't have to learn how to "compile" everything. My toaster doesn't expect me to heat the coils myself!
So I paid $200 for remarkably less hassle. I wish all taxes were so painless.
I do think it sucks that you have to pay for windows even if you're not going to use it. But look at it this way: you probably spent less than I did at CompUSA. And everybody loves a bargain.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
This sounds like a nice thing... altho I think what Carmack did was much cooler.. GPL the engine and still charge for the data file. If Rockstar games did this, they might even find plenty of volunteers ready to port this thing to OpenGL.
-- Knowledge shared is power lost. -- Aleister Crowley
I'm all in favor of trying to root out the causes of hate, but it's annoying when you ask a question like "why do we love to hate?" as though you yourself were a pixie floating free above the human condition who had never actually hated anyone or anything. The roots of hatred go a lot deeper than video games.
Anything worth doing is worth doing badly -- G.K. Chesterton
Unless you didn't like the game, I don't see why you feel bad about having payed for the game. I remember buying the original Quake a long time ago. Now, it's basically free. That's fine by me. It was fun while it lasted back in the day.
..continue updating Windows 3.11 for all eternity? RedHat, their 1.0 release?
Hell, should Ford continue to produce parts for the Model T?
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch, and as such, programmers working for you need to be paid.
Any company that pays their programmers to work on free software, when the company's only source of revenue is selling software, will be visited by the Stockholder Inquisition. And rightfully so.
Once in awhile, you could probably get away with diverting a few programmers to work on something like this. It could be a useful PR ploy. (In this case, I can't see that happening. The latest GTAs have been selling like hotcakes, and if they make another, that will sell just as well from the looks of it.)
Now, what companies should consider doing is releasing the source itself, and washing their hands of the entire thing (save, perhaps, for a 'no profit for you!' license.)..
This gives them a PR boost (yay), saves money by not wasting the time of their programmers (yay!), and ultimately, stocks the industry with new talent. There's plenty of people out there who'd like to get into working on games. Buying a license to an engine usually isn't a good idea for them - they're usually too expensive and will be overwhelming.
If they had something to tinker on, for free, that'd be great. After all, in gaming, like any other programming discipline, the basics are the basics.
I get the feeling this may be just something that comes from Rockstar being a relatively cool company. Their UK offices are just round from my brother's in Leith, and from their thankyou note to the pond in VC (the pub down the road from the office, and best pub I've ever been to) they do seem fairly cool guys.
Now, if more companies were like this, and less corporately minded then maybe we'd see more of this kind of thing.
I seem to recall my freshman year of college, those with faster Pentium-based computers played Quake with cracked copies.
Those with slower machines opted for multiplayer GTA, which was also not paid for. Unlike Quake, I was led to believe that this was the norm for GTA, and that compared to the sales, the number of GTA "users" was staggering. But this might have something to do with the fact that stores refused to carry the product.
Anyway, this is hardly amazing news, as there were already patches for GTA back in the day that allowed for Glide accelerated graphics ( for all that fixed overhead angle texture-scaling ). Moving it to Direct3D is simply a small step in the same direction.
But, then again, there are dozens of classic software titles that could receive a similar treatment. But the companies don't want to let go of anything remotely valuable, and even make up excuses about having to support a free product. I would not be surprised if the GTA community takes up most of the support slack on this one, so maybe that will blow one of the most common developer's excuses right out of the water.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
_considering_ NWN runs better in wine then it does in windows (at least for me), I wouldn't say wine is crap.
Hey! That's my sig you're smoking there!
Im sitting here desperatly trying to get settlers (the first in the series) to run under dosemu (great project btw) and it occurred to me. Why doesn't Bluebyte release this under the GPL or something like that? It's not like they are selling huge quantities of this game.
It's almosed impossible to properly run this game with sound and everything on a modern PC unless your modern PC happends to have a legacy sb16 awe ISA card.
If they released old titles perhaps small communities would pop up not to mention the good will the company would get.
just my $.02
He's talking sales. He's wrong though. The most popular computer game in the world is Solitaire, or maybe Minesweeper. I can't prove it, but it makes sense.
All you proved is that the most popular online game is Counter-Strike, but I bet there are more than 120k players in Everquest... something like 400k players last time I checked, though I doubt they are all playing at once.
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
Don't get me wrong, I commend Rockstar for distributing a great game like GTA free of charge, but why not give the source also while they are at it? Since the game engine is completely different than the one used in GTA3 and Vice City they really don't have to worry about competition arising from modifications to the source code of the original GTA.
:P ). The FreeSpace Source Code Project was formed and has made many enhancements to the game. They recently released FS2 Open version 3.5 which adds OpenGL support, the ability to add custom movies to mission briefings, many new weapons, damage decals, and ship trails just to name a few things.
One great example of how releasing the source brings benefits to fans of a game is Descent Freespace 2. Early last year Volition released the source code to the game. I know personally I enjoyed hacking around with it a bit for fun (and playing make believe that I coded games for a living instead of backend java apps
Releasing the source to GTA would undoubtedly spawn similar projects to enhance what is still a great game, and who knows some of the ideas the community may come up with could help Rockstar out with new innovations for latest games in the series.
This comment was generated by a Squadron of Ultra Ninjas
I am truly impressed. There are so many old games that I would LOVE to see released like this just because they're classics. (Maxis kind of did the same by creating a java applet of the Original Sim City that will run off their site.)
Half of them are games once bought that no longer run on modern PCs. So I've already spent the money. Populous, Warcraft I, all the old sierra games, etc.
It's really nice of them to release an updated copy but I'd appreciate just releasing the source even more.
I don't mind supporting a company that does this one bit!
Way to go guys!
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
And another one:
http://files.volved.com/misc/GTAINSTALLER.ZIP
-VolVE
Quit whining, you penniless hippie. Just because Microsoft bashing is fashionable doesn't make it logically sound.
Most Linux users are ashamed to admit it, but they typically have a dual boot set up that gives them the choice to either 1) enter the garish lair of Gnome hell and screw with their settings for hours on end until some obscure CPU feature starts working or 2) go into Windows and get work done. They only boot into Linux when their leetness levels start drying up and they feel the need to be haughty and condescending, just like you, my good man.
I agree completely, although I've been modded up to 5 once or twice, it's extremely rare, even though the majority of my comments are on topic (I usually get modded down as a troll if I say something the mod's disagree with).
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
I, for one, would be quite resentful of a system that reduced the value of my creation(s) based on that kind of system and I think most individual copyright holders would feel the same. So, since corporations have legal rights very similar to private individuals, the law would have to apply equally and it would be just another penalty for individual creativity.
Solving the "copyright problem" is very, very simple and we all know it: Limit copyright duration to a very reasonable 20 years and have done with it. Profiting from a creation for 20 years is more than adequate, and such a term would encourage creative output on the part of individuals AND corporations. That number may look short, but really any longer term primarily benefits behemoth corporations (see Disney) and encourages them to stagnate and get testy with consumers who don't want to pay for the same piece of work over and over again until they're dead.
Of course, it certainly won't change like that in my lifetime given the power that "big business" (ouch) exerts over our national legislature but I can dare to dream (and support the right lobbying/public interest groups - i.e., these peoples).