Rockstar has issued surprise updates to LA Noire and Max Payne 3 on PC, throwing in all the DLC for free.

Both games have also seen support for 32-bit operating systems "deprecated". Of note: the LA Noire changes do not apply to LA Noire: The VR Case Files versions of the game.

These updates were quietly issued yesterday, 19th April - the same day Rockstar somehow managed to delist its entire PC catalogue on Steam before relisting it again (Midnight Club 2 was briefly available to buy for the first time in three years). Perhaps someone somewhere at Rockstar fell on a load of PC publishing buttons or something?

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Late last week, sharp-eyed internet surveyors noticed that Grand Theft Auto 4 had suddenly, without warning, been delisted from Steam. With no official explanation, fans were left to speculate on the reason for the move, but now Rockstar has spoken, pointing the blame finger squarely in the direction of Microsoft's now-defunct Games for Windows Live.

In a statement provided to USgamer, Rockstar explained it was forced to suspend sales of GTA4 on Steam simply because it's now "no longer possible to generate the additional keys needed to continue selling the current version of the game", given that Microsoft has officially ended support for the Games for Windows Live platform baked into the title.

Although this means Grand Theft Auto 4 is unavailable for purchase on Steam at present (standalone expansion Episodes from Liberty City is unaffected), Rockstar says it's "looking at other options for distributing GTA4 for PC".

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Joining the likes of Blizzard and Ubisoft, Rockstar has created its own games launcher allowing players to access its PC games from one place, regardless of what digital store you bought them from.

The Rockstar Game Launcher is available to download right now, and also lets fans buy games directly from the developer via its shop.

For a limited time, as an incentive to install the launcher, you can claim a free copy of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas when you download it, which will be permanently added to your Social Club account's library.

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The virtual reality version of LA Noire looks set to launch for PlayStation VR.

That's according to a PEGI ratings board listing for LA Noire: The VR Case Files on PS4 spotted by Resetera user Toumari.

This version of the game previously launched for PC back in 2017.

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There is a familiar pattern to media coverage whenever Rockstar publishes a game. There is talk about how the developer has used its newest game to iterate upon and redefine the open world genre. There are almost always articles on how various Hollywood films influenced Rockstar's development process. And there are at least one or two polemics that attack the developer for transgressing established norms about what can and cannot be done in video games. This last type of essay inevitably concludes that video games are bad, and lead to an increase in interpersonal violence as well as the downfall of civilisation.

What's interesting about this pattern of coverage is how often it overlooks Rockstar's own development and publishing habits, most notably the company's steady development and publication of games set in the past. Indeed, if we were to remove the typical narrative surrounding Rockstar games related to game mechanics, cinema and satire, we might instead see Rockstar as a publisher of historical games on par with Firaxis (Civilization), Paradox (Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis), or Ubisoft (Assassin's Creed). It's now commonplace to see articles, podcasts and videos criticising those publishers' appropriation of the past, but Rockstar remains remarkably unscathed even though the company has developed and published a series of games that, taken together, chronicle modern American history. These games include Red Dead Redemption 2 (set in 1899), Red Dead Redemption (1911), L.A. Noire (1947), Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (1986) and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (1992).

Whenever one attempts to analyse the history in historical fiction they'll always run into the hand-waving argument that "it's fiction, not history". This defense has been used by Red Dead Redemption 2 lead writer Dan Houser, who stated recently: "[the game] may be a work of historical fiction, but it's not a work of history.". Yet we know popular historical fiction often plays an outsized influence on the way the public remembers historical figures or important time periods. Consider, for instance, the impact of Shakespeare's plays on the reputations of Cleopatra and Richard III. Or the importance of Saving Private Ryan to public commemorations of D-Day. To take an example from my own life, I've probably had more conversations with students on the influence of Blackadder Goes Forth on our memory of the First World War than I've had on the actual history of the First World War (although that probably says something more about the quality of my teaching than anything else). The truth is better than fiction, but it's often the fiction we remember the best.

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I'm not sure if there's another game I feel more conflicted about than Max Payne 3. The first two games rank amongst my personal favourites - particularly the second, which I think is one of the finest action shooters going. Max Payne 3 is at once better and worse than its predecessors. It has more intense shootouts, far superior visual effects, and production values to rival any Hollywood blockbuster - all of which were exactly what Max Payne strived to achieve back in 1999.

I also think it's Rockstar's most revealing creation. Rockstar has built a reputation as an architect of worlds, unparalleled not just in scope but in the nitty gritty of life simulation. No studio has taken a genre and made it their own quite like Rockstar North has with Grand Theft Auto. Rockstar may not have invented the open-city genre, but the Housers' signature is so deeply inscribed upon it they may as well have.

Max Payne is another developer's IP, and one which Rockstar sought to imprint its own personality upon. But Max already has his own personality, one constructed from wry cynicism, verbose monologues, and overwrought similes. The snow-lined streets, grotty tenements and endless nights of Noo Yoik Siddy are as much a part of his character as his tragic back-story and superhuman reflexes. Moreover, as a game Max Payne is the antithesis of everything Rockstar had built up to that point - a fast and furious action shooter that runs almost entirely on a highly specific style, whose substance only appears when time slows to a gelatinous crawl.

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Editor's note: This week sees the re-release of L.A. Noire on PS4, Xbox One and Switch, and to mark the occasion we thought we'd return to Chris Donlan's piece on playing through the game - still one of the very best things ever published on Eurogamer, he'll hate me for saying - which first went live back in 2012. Enjoy!

Today, I'm going to tell you about the time my grandfather shot a man in the ass.

The year was 1949. The place was downtown Los Angeles. The occasion was a robbery with violence. A small store, I think: a tailor's, or maybe a family-run grocery market? History has not recorded all of the details.

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