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."

Comments

I'm slightly astonished

[James_Duncan8181]

One would think that the Xbox 360 port should come right over...I'm just not sure where all the extra bugs would arise. The actual game logic and assets should be identical.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[ModernGeek]

An easy port have been the case with the original xbox, as it was just a pentium 3 computer running a windows varient, but the new xbox 360 uses a power pc chip (used in macintoshes from the mid 90s until 2006) with an os that is based off of an early version of windows nt that supported power pc prcessors. I imagine the differences in modern pc architecture and the modern xbox actually make porting a game quite difficult if it is not written on a common platform that runs on all systems, which I assume because of it's nature, gta 4 is not

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[MrHanky]

As a modern geek, you should realise that CPU architecture doesn't matter a lot when coding in modern languages.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Amphetam1ne]

It's the DRM. Many of the crashing problems seem to be Securom crashing, which causes the game client to exit to desktop imediately. It also needs you to upgrade to the latest Games For Windows release, which doesn't support Vista64 at the moment. So that's all the hardcore gamers with 4GB+ of ram out of the picture.

Only cost them $200k to inconvenience players to such a high degree.... I hope everyone who's having problems returns it to the store. High levels of returns make the distributer very uneasy, which in turn should send a message to the publisher.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[cbrocious]

I'm no DRM fan (I've been working against it for years, e.g. El Tunes and PyMusique), but there's no reason that it'd cause these problems, outside of the authorization problems. Once the game has started, the most the DRM will be doing is decrypting game code, if it's not decrypted entirely at loadtime.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Dunbal]

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.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[AuMatar]

Debian doesn't have the performance constraints of a game. While ISRs need to be fast, everything else can take up gobs of CPU without really noticing it. Games don't have that luxury. Talk to actual game programmers- they do use assembly, and they do have to worry about CPU and system architecture. I have a few friends who worked as recently as the PS2, they still have examples of hand rolled assembler for the shaders.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Elrond, Duke of URL]

Huh... I guess I've just been very lucky so far. I've been playing GTA4 for two days now with no stability issues. I've got Vista64 installed with 4GB RAM. That's the gaming side of my PC (I do everything else in Debian), so I try to tune it towards better game performance... things like turning off services that I'll never need for games.

Now, the port does have some issues. I've got a fairly decent machine and, especially when compared with games like Crysis or Farcry 2, this engine clearly needs some optimization. Strangely, it seems CPU limited rather than GPU limited. After I quit the game, I can see on my CPU graph that both cores have been running at ~100%. I spent some time tweaking the video settings and right now I've got it running with both decent quality and a decent framerate.

One "feature" that seems to be annoying a lot of people is the video memory "calculator" the game uses. For each setting you modify, it calculates how much video memory that will cost. Your total is your installed video memory (512MB on my card). Not everything affects it, but increasing resolution, texture size, and draw distance will. So depending on how you set these you can't necessarily have them all high. But, it doesn't seem to work very well. You can override it from the command line. I forced it to use my LCD resolution (1280x1024) with high textures and a decent draw distance. This puts me at about 730/512MB on my "budget" yet the game still runs just fine and it looks better too.

They added a "dynamic shadow" feature to the PC version which you can adjust in the graphics menu. The values range from 0 to 16, but the quality at any setting is mediocre. It's a nice idea, but poorly implemented, and the game will run a bit faster when I turn it off.

Another annoying bit already mentioned is the control scheme. Fortunately, I purchased an XBox360 controller for use on my PC because that is the only gamepad supported by GTA4 (though I didn't know that when I bought the controller). Also, you can't actually *change* any of the mappings. There is a "Controller Configuration" menu item, but when you select it you are shown a picture of the controller and a diagram of what each button does. You can press R-stick left and right but all that does is show you the mappings for on foot, in vehicle, etc.

Like previous GTA ports, the PC version will let you play your own music on one of the radio stations (Independence FM here). They've even improved it for GTA4 and one of the modes will automatically insert fake commercials and DJ banter between your music if you like. But... it doesn't support Ogg (my preferred format) or many others. I do have some MP3s, though, and could always transcode if I wanted. The game specifically says that you can put shortcuts to your music or music folders into the user music directory. But... it doesn't work with networked mounts. I keep all of my music on my server and access via Samba from Windows or NFS in Linux. But not for GTA4... it just ignores any shortcuts that access another machine. Lame!

Still, despite these issues, it's been working far better for me than it has for most people and I've certainly been enjoying it so far.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[erroneus]

How is anything based on Win32 and DirectX not a Windows derivative?

I once wasted close to an hour watching a Microsoft guy give a history of "big icons in a tool bar at the bottom of the screen" before he demonstrated the Mac OS X panel on Windows 7. They can claim all day long that it isn't what it looks like. But when you see it, it looks pretty obvious as to what it is.

And I suppose WindowsCE isn't a Windows derivative either for the same reasons stated by that developer's post?

People have hacked into and examined the XBox and XBox 360 code extensively and they rather disagree with the assertions of the developer. And to make a car analogy, I would rather trust the word of a mechanic than a salesman. "Oh no! A Lexus is not a Toyota!!" Right...

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Zarhan]

I do have some MP3s, though, and could always transcode if I wanted. The game specifically says that you can put shortcuts to your music or music folders into the user music directory. But... it doesn't work with networked mounts. I keep all of my music on my server and access via Samba from Windows or NFS in Linux. But not for GTA4... it just ignores any shortcuts that access another machine. Lame!

Does the old "Map network location to a drive letter" standby work? That way the shortcuts would refer to e.g. E:\Music instead of \\FILESERVER\MUSIC...?

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[sunami]

Right, it makes it an emulator!

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[thepotoo]

Actually, this DRM is special. I think it could be responsible for the bugs people are seeing. Rockstar has gone out of their way to add in extra crap: dozens of little "easter eggs" like a spinning camera, missing textures, similar stuff, to copies that don't validate. It's more than a simple one time Securom check, there's at least a dozen different hooks that check to see if the version is legit.

This might be why the scene is having such trouble cracking the damned game. FeDOR may have finally cracked it, but it's taken more PROPERs than your average release.

Note/Disclaimer: I'm not going to pirate or buy this game, I'm nowhere near the minimum system requirements, and I don't generally pirate stuff anyway. I'm just following the scene releases so I can be the first one to laugh at Rockstar's "uncrackable, no really this time" DRM.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Dun Malg]

How is anything based on Win32 and DirectX not a Windows derivative?

Those are APIs. Windows is an OS. Two completely different operating systems could use the same APIs, but handle the API calls completely different behind the scenes. That's kind of the point of an API.

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Hurricane78]

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*

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[Carlio]

You can in the UK at least - the Sale of Goods Act (1979) requires that goods sold are of 'satisfactory quality' and demonstrate 'fitness for purpose'; the GTA 4 release admirably fails on both counts and GAME/HMV/Currys/whatever are breaking the law if they won't give you a full refund with the same payment method you used. Law of the land > Company policy

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[thepotoo]

Please. I prefer the term piracy. Calling it copyright infringement makes me feel like some loser sitting in his mothers basement trading 1s and 0s with other losers. Who wants to do that?

Piracy be nothing like yer copyright infringement, it be totally badass. ARRRRGH!

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[billcopc]

It ended up biting Steinberg in the ass, because the crack was no simple EXE patch, it was a full-blown dongle emulator. By making Cubase SX3 hard to crack, they directly encouraged H2O to write a universal crack for all their dongle-infected apps.

To make things worse, the protection was so invasive, many layers of just-in-time decryption, that it significantly slowed down the app and led to all sorts of weird timing issues. As a result, a staggering number of people stayed on the previous version, which was quite similar in features.

The same nonsense is happening with Cubase 4. They've added a handful of crap features few people care about, so all those in the know are sticking with their existing version. You obviously can't go out and buy an older version in-store, so new folks wind up with C4 simply because they don't have a choice.

In this situation, one has to wonder how much money they've lost due to the DRM. It has taken a lackluster upgrade and made it worse, so a bunch of people are jumping ship to a competitor's product, such as Ableton, Sonar or the extremely popular Reaper. They all do pretty much the same things, support the same plugins (or more), and often provide more efficient interfaces (Cubase is kind of backwards for some things). How long until Cubase gets pwned by its own copy protection ?

Re:I'm slightly astonished

[spyrochaete]

...your rationale is actually hurting your cause.

...a better approach would be to not purchase the game, and not pirate it either. By pirating it, you just give them ammunition to keep pushing DRM as evidence that it isn't yet good enough.

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!

"Please do not turn off the system"

[Tojo-Mojo]

The port is very faithful to the console versions. My favorite part is the "Please do not turn off the system" message when saving. I was just about to hit that big 'ol power button, too!

Re:"Please do not turn off the system"

[elrous0]

Just once I'm going to turn it off during one of these messages just to see what happens. If I don't make it out alive, tell my wife I love her.

Ha-ha!

[Dunbal]

Makes you wish you could have tried it first before buying it, huh? Oh wait, thanks to "copyright infringement" laws making YOU the criminal and DRM, you can't.

      Enjoy being ripped off your $49.99. I guess eventually they'll get a patch out. But remember to support the industry! They obviously want your money more than you do.

Re:Ha-ha!

[Mascot]

People are getting their refund requests denied now. Presumably Valve were being nice to the first few, but shut the door when a lot of people started asking.

Re:Ha-ha!

[Mascot]

If you charge back you risk Valve shutting down your Steam account, apparently. The joys of someone else controlling access to games you've bought I guess.

Re:Ha-ha!

[Joe U]

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.

You know you really fail when...

[Anonymous Coward]

Pirates can't even fix your game.

Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack?

[anomnomnomymous]

And you tell this because?
There are numerous (high profile) games I've been buying the past years which didn't give me any problems, and even added the advantage over consoles of being able to tinker with it (for example, mods).

The past few GTA releases on the PC were also nearly flawless, so don't know where your advice comes from. I guess you conveniently forget about the PC-games that have no problems whatsoever.

Bought this POS.

[juuri]

Despite my concerns over all the hoopla DRM I purchased this via Steam. Let's go over a few of the problems:

a) ~15 Gig. Really? Really.
b) Needs new versions of at least 2, maybe 3 Microsoft programs to be installed before playing.
c) Installs some fucking crap ass community software that was never asked for or mentioned when making the initial purchase over steam. This shiet from Rockstar goes in the system tray and puts up a fricken splash screen at every reboot on your desktop just to play their game.
d) The inane pushing of the new Games for Windows stuff. Oh I have to create a local G4W profile even if I never plan on playing online?
e) During loading it displays a black screen for 3-4 minutes on my box with 4gig/7200rpm disk. It's a laptop so at least I can feel the disk spinning to make sure it is doing something.
f) The resolution change takes SO long I never get to confirm it before it switches back when I am actually in the game.
g) The first time I ran it with defaults, no textures loaded until about 30 seconds *after* the opening cinematic was done and my player was sitting in the car.
h) Running the benchmark twice within one session causes a crash on my machine.
i) It has already crashed multiple times. ... since I only boot into windows to play games like this it has basically rendered itself a total fucking disgrace. Valve better be refunding my money or they will lose an up-till-now loyal customer. I've been playing games for like 28 years (GIT AWF MY L4WN) and this is the most buggy piece of shit my eyes have seen since some of the Atari Jaguar games.

Re:Bought this POS.

[mike2R]

c) Installs some fucking crap ass community software that was never asked for or mentioned when making the initial purchase over steam. This shiet from Rockstar goes in the system tray and puts up a fricken splash screen at every reboot on your desktop just to play their game.

This really annoyed me as well - Startup Guard caught it trying to register that community crap to run at startup. Denied it but it still keeps itself running after closing the game. I mean why? What chance is there that I want that crap running 24/7 on my PC? Reminds me of the last time I installed Real Player. Right click on the tray icon and you can uncheck "run at system start" so at least you can turn it off, but it is still out of order.

Not had any of the other problems you mention though - well except the 15GB (!!) download from Steam, I'd have bought a physical copy if I'd known it was that big.

Re:Bought this POS.

[Degro]

Games for Windows is a load of crap. I thought it was great at first because Crysis and Fallout 3 both had full support for the USB XBox 360 controllers out of the box. All I had to do was plug it in. Great, I like to relax and sit back with a controller at my PC like I do at with actual Xbox. Then I rushed out to buy Call of Duty: World at War for my PC because it also had the logo. No controller support whatsoever. WTF? What does Games for Windows even mean then if it's not going to be a coherent Xbox like experience for windows gaming? The whole effort feels very much like scam now.

Re:Bought this POS.

[The Moof]

Games for Windows is a good idea done wrong, and only if you have an Xbox360. I thought it was nice to have a cross-platform friends and all that. However, it's very poorly implemented.

• They tie settings and saves into your profile and you have to be signed in (either locally or on Live). There are workarounds for this, but I'm not so hot on extra work to play your save game files.
• If you want to compare achievements with your PC version and someone's Xbox version, you can't (without pen and paper). Live thinks that a version for windows and a version for the 360 is two completely different games.
• When it opts to update your games it sometimes offers no feedback that it's working, or that it has completed successfully. It usually just dumps you back to the desktop when completed.
• Sometimes, it's the culprit for game crashes and BSOD's.

They should've added it as an optional feature instead of making it a requirement to use. My first experience with it was in Fallout 3. At first it was nifty, but after coming across all of the problems mentioned above, I'm not so sure it's worth the hassle.

Anyone but me think this is a great strategy?

[meist3r]

Seriously, so many developers and publishers have been complaining about the huge rate of PC title piracy (e.g. http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20567 or http://www.videogamer.com/news/18-10-2008-9693.html) and how much more they love their locked-down consoles. Isn't this move the smartest thing Rockstar could have done?

I mean If I made 400$m with my latest game on the consoles alone and I feared I wouldn't sell as many PC copies as I could have I just make the PC version the shittiest experience you can have. Horrendously high hardware requirements, terrible online components, cluttered with spy/mal/adware. That will turn off as many PC customers as possible and make it less attractive for pirates.

I bet the console sales figures of GTA IV will go up again now that many PC gamers have realized that they'd rather buy this for their console than deal with all the crap. Watch for the spike!

But why are they so upset?

[LarsWestergren]

I mean, you get 4 programs on your harddrive for the price of one -
1) SecureROM
2) Games for Windows LIVE
3) Rockstar Social Club
4) An early Beta version of some game

Sounds like a great deal to me.

I wouldn't know - boycotting

[snarfies]

I was really looking forward to buying GTA4 for the PC. I am the proud owner of GTA3, GTA:VC, and GTA:SA. But I can't buy GTA4, and this was so deeply dissapointing I actually sent Rockstar/Take2 a physical paper letter (which I am sure they will laugh at, ball up, and throw in the trash).

The problem? Mandatory online activation enforced by SecuROM. It isn't so much the latter I object to (though I DO object to it) as the former. I sometimes actually go back and install a game 5, 10, or even more years later and replay it if it was any good. What happens 10 years from now when the machine I am required to connect to no longer exists? Sure, I'm sure I can download a crack, or a patch, or something by then, but I want to own a fully working game right out of the box, not crippleware.

I know that the same applies to MMORPGs as well, but guess what? I have never, and never will, buy one of those, either.