After disabling the option to buy Grand Theft Auto IV in January, Rockstar now say 2008’s open-world murder simulator will return to sale in March with a few changes. Microsoft’s awful Games For Windows Live technogubbins is being removed because it caused the trouble in the first place, and that’s great news. It seems some folks will also receive the expansions or base game for free too. Unfortunately, Rockstar are also removing GTA IV’s multiplayer mode and will temporarily disable several radio stations. A mixed crimebag.

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After 21 years as a Rockstar Games big cheese, Dan Houser will leave the company in March. He’s co-written almost every Rockstar game since 1999, including Grand Theft Auto from London through to V, Bully, Max Payne 3, and the Red Dead Redemptions. That’s made him a big influence on the tone of Rockstar’s games. I wonder how that might change once he’s moved on. Where he’s going and what he’ll do next, we don’t know. He can probably afford to eat pizza while watching Heat on loop the rest of his life, to be honest.

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As much fun as we have with our virtual bank-heists, car-chases and random muggings, music licensing seems like a far more lucrative racket. Due to expensive, time-limited music licenses expiring, Grand Theft Auto IV developers Rockstar were recently faced with either pulling the game from sale, paying for a license renewal, or removing a good chunk of its famed soundtrack. Today, a small patch rolled out across multiple platforms, removing the now-unlicensed music tracks and it looks like the damage done may be greater than expected.

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Rockstar have confirmed that they need to cut a number of songs from Grand Theft Auto IV due to music licenses expiring, though they will shuffle in new songs to replace at least some. Probably expect a new patch to cut the old and whack in the new. The Russian pop station Vladivostok FM will take the brunt of the cuts, which will also affect GTA 4’s Episodes From Liberty City standalone expansions. Rockstar have needed to do this with GTA before and it’s still weird to cut up old copies of games, but at least this time they’re taping it back together afterwards. (more…)