Slashdot Mirror
Players Furious Over Buggy GTA IV PC Release
Jupix writes "It took Rockstar most of a year to port Grand Theft Auto IV to the PC, and while they claim this was because they wanted polish and quality with their PC release, it appears the result has been less than satisfactory. Players all over the internet are furious over numerous bugs in the release, ranging from nonfunctional internet registration and graphics glitches to completely inoperative installations. One of the game's largest retailers, Steam, has reportedly gone so far as to start handing out refunds to hordes of unsatisfied (and no doubt uncomfortably noisy) customers."
It's the DRM.
Is that what they call Christmas now?
It's not DRM, it's the "we have to get this out the door before Christmas z0mg Xmas sales!!!11" mentality from the short sighted marketing department. Ship now and patch later is typical for this time of year. It probably does not bode well for the franchise, however.
Yeah, the DRM probably broke the game, but QA HAS to have seen this problem before shipping. Obviously $50 a copy was more important than the trivial fact of the game actually working or not.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
What you did not mention was, that the cracked (actually decrypted/compiled are better words for it) version ran much faster.
What they did was crazy. They decrypted the whole GUI code and only encrypted it right before use. Even the mouse was sluggish in the "original" version.
After cracking it, it ran nice and smooth.
This is easy to crack as soon as you know how to call the decryption for every piece of code needed. You have to follow the calls down, until you have a decrypted version of everything.
It's so stupid that it hurts: The CPU has to execute it in a un-encrypted form. So it has to lie in ram in that form some time in the execution. So you will always be able to get the raw machine code. But tell that to a PHB who can't tell the difference between 0.002 dollars and 0.002 cents... *sigh*
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
If you think otherwise you don't grasp the DRM in Steam very well.
I think I just did. The solution is to create a new steam account for every game. If you have to chargeback one, you'll still have the others.
I disagree. I'm sure GTA4 is totally worth playing, but having to deal with SecuROM, Games for Windows Live, and Rockstar Social Club is a hell of a lot of baggage.
I argue that pirating the game states very clearly that the product has value but the terms are unacceptable. I think the last thing any gamer wants is to discourage Rockstar from making more GTA games!