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Grand Theft Auto Released For Free

Posted by Hemos on from the ka-blam-ka-blam dept.

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.

8 of 423 comments (clear)

  1. BRAVO! BRAVO! by Omikr0n · · Score: 5, Insightful
    It's really great to see software companies finally respecting their loyal customers enough to "reward" them with a free 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.

    1. Re:BRAVO! BRAVO! by quecojones · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You're suggesting that gamers have brand loyalty.

      May I bring to your attention the fans of a game series that have switched consoles/platforms in order to continue enjoying their games? The game company is Squaresoft and the game is Final Fantasy

      --
      "PROFANITY is the inevitable literary crutch of the inarticulate MOTHER FUCKER." -- some PC user
  2. Put it on Kazaa! by revscat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. Does everything have to be about MS? by theNote · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  4. Re:Society loves violence by Planesdragon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  5. Finally, someone gets it... by TopShelf · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!

    --
    Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
  6. Not to rain on everybody's parade... by diakka · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  7. Funny thing is, hardly anyone ever paid for GTA... by default+luser · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.