Slashdot Mirror
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.
When I last looked at the site (a year ago, admittidly), it had GTA1 up for download then.
Quick look shows it has GTA2, Hidden & Dangerous, and many others available for free download. All you have to do is watch some ads on your screen whilst the files download.
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.
Free software is evil.
:P
Cop killing video games are evil! You have to repent to the lord Gates and be forgiven of your sins, washed away by the blood of the lame (Jobs).
Actually, never played the game myself. I remember ALL of the churches and law enforcement agencies in my area pitched a raving hissy fit though.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
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.
An unknown suspect, or suspects, rammed the Rockstar Games server, waited for the admin to get out and then reversed over them several times.
police suspect slashdotting...
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
http://www.fileshack.com/file.x?fid=2398
I'm guessing there are many other places also to download it from. But if you are willing to wait in line for it at fileshack, its another option.
Its not what it is, its something else.
Actually, if someone reverse engineered the network protocol and made a server for it that allowed persistent multiplayer GTA I that would be bloody fantastic. It seems that everyone is making MMORPGs now, but they're all spending too much effort on the graphics, and not enough on gameplay. (Except for a couple of notable entrenched examples which have crappy graphics, but have become extremely popular. You know what they are.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
But then concidering wine(x) is crap, most probably not.
I'm not a native speaker, so I am always happy to learn new idioms. Does "concidering" mean "drink some cider together"? Please concider this with me!
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
GTA1 runs great with WineX.
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.
this is what you get after you put your details in
We have received your information; unfortunately, we cannot provide you with this download at this time.
they should put this BEFORE you register.
I suggest creating a BitTorrent for it. BitTorrent is open source software written in an open language for both Linux and Windows. Here is a link to a great BitTorrent site. BitTorrent makes better use of your bandwidth than Kazaa or GNUtella. It is important to note that BitTorrent is just a swarming and segmented downloading technology that allows someone with limited bandwidth to provide a large file to 1000s of downloaders.