Matewis: Weird that so many people are having issues with GTA4. I managed to play it without any issues, except having to put up with Rockstar social club. The only thing that really bugged me was the lack of AA support, and I suppose poor optimization. That aside though, I thought that the game was brilliant. It really felt like a major step up from the GTA3 series in terms of authenticity. The cities and world in general felt far more alive and detailed.
I had lots of problems with GTA4 as did 3 other friends. The problems were all entirely related to the insane plethora of DRM on the game and jumping through hoops having to create 50 accounts online just to play the game, as well as endless googling trying to figure out how to get around all that crap whenever GFWL and/or Rockstar Social club were offline due to DDoS attacks or other instability. Every day for a week and a half when I tried to start the game I could not log into one or the other service and got a less than satisfactory consumer experience trying to play a single player game.
Yes, there are ways that one can work around all that stuff but it requires searching google and hacking around, or installing third party hacks to bypass GFWL or similar - nothing that a consumer should ever have to do after spending their money and expecting a good experience.
It's entirely possible that other gamers have bought GTA4 and the Steam, GFWL, Microsoft Live, and Rockstar Social services were all in a rare state where they were online and functioning simultaneously, and whom already had accounts on 1 or more of these services so they had no need to go create new accounts all over the Earth. I'm sure some people have had that experience and that they've played the game and by rolling the dice happened to navigate around service disruption etc. to the point where they don't even realize how horribly wrong it can all go out of pure luck and coincidence.
But that is not the experience of myself or my friends with this game. Endless service disruption and inability to play the single player game effort-free was our experience, then googling around for days looking at all the advice on how to workaround this service outage or that service outage or hack the game, replace DLL files or whatever to bypass GFWL etc.
My motto is that if I have to use 3rd party hacks to make a piece of software or technology I bought work even to my own basic expectations, then it is poorly designed and I have a bad consumer experience and rightfully am upset with the company who created the product. It doesn't mean everyone will have that same experience because sometimes the planets all line up in a row too, as well as other people sometimes having a lot of tolerance for annoying crap without being annoyed.
Having said that, once I did get the game working and was able to play it and hook up my Logitech G27, then the game became fun and I have no complaints about the actual game itself so far - just the bullshit DRM. But, I also have to take some responsibility for this problem myself though too, because I normally always consult
http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Big_List_of_3rd_Party_DRM_on_Steam before buying any Steam games, and this is one of two times where a sale was on and I reacted emotionally to the sale and bought the game collection (GTA full game collection) without doing my research. $10 for GTA1,2,3,Vice City, San Andreas, GTA4 and expansions. So despite being very upset about the GTA4 experience, I bit my tongue after and will get enjoyment out of the game eventually when I dig into it, and it's the only game (and the expansions) in the collection that have these problems, so it's a $3-4 or so mistake on my part and ultimately nothing to burn people at the stake over.
Still, it was a horrible consumer experience in the end all the frustration with getting GFWL and Rockstar Social to work with endless service outages, and so that put Rockstar on my "dead to me" list which means I wont buy GTA5 or any of their other games in the future unless they are DRM-free. Sadly, I'd really love to play GTA5 because it looks amazing and all the other GTA games are fantastic when you actually get to play them, but I absolutely refuse to part with my money and support that directly. If I eventually buy a new video card and it comes with GTA5 or some other stroke of luck then I might get to play it, but until then I'll have to make due with GTA4 and the older GTA games and other stuff. I'll give a game company the benefit of doubt until I feel they've screwed me once badly, and after that then I will only buy their games if they show up on GOG.com DRM-free with no exceptions. But that's just the way I roll and I know everyone isn't as hardcore about how they feel about that stuff.
