On April 29 2008, Rockstar’s peak multiplayer experience (at the time) was released. It allowed for endless fun and messing around in the dense world of Liberty City, in either free-roam, or specific game modes that ended up being extraordinarily popular and spawning some funny internet videos, such as Cops & Crooks.
I personally spent quite some time in it when it released on PC in December that same year, in fact, I participated in a couple of Rockstar dev multiplayer events which netted me the Let Sleeping Rockstars Lie achievement. Others could get the same achievement by killing someone who was infected with that virus, but it felt more special back then.
Today on March 19 2020, after a few previous patches to fix minor performance issues and Windows 10 incompatibilities, Rockstar updated GTA IV on PC to remove multiplayer, its dependency to Games for Windows Live (depreciated in 2013), and its outdated and incompatible DRM – Securom. LAN Multiplayer has also been removed from the game.
With this update, some radio stations have also gone missing, more specifically some of those that feature in Episodes from Liberty City, which has also been merged into one singular version of GTA IV, now called Complete Edition – with those caveats though.
It’s a bit of the end of an era for many, who spent many hours in GTA IV multiplayer in a world that doesn’t have a lot of the things in GTA Online that annoy some people.
Au revoir.
Release Schedule + Release on the Rockstar Games Launcher
Rockstar has also made available a release schedule. On March 24, players will also be able to buy and activate the game using retail codes on the Rockstar Games Launcher. At a later date, users who bought IV or EFLC in the old Games for Windows Live digital store will also be able to redeem digital copies of the game on the company’s official Launcher.