The Kotaku website reports that a large number of license agreements for music from Grand Theft Auto IV will expire on 26 April. The game came out in April 2008, which may make agreements that are only valid for ten years.
Kotaku relies on an unnamed source from the gaming industry that says GTA IV will lose a lot of music although the source could not give an exact list of the specific numbers that will disappear from the game. The game website has approached Rockstar with the question whether it is true that there are quite a few licenses for music to go, but the publisher has not responded to that yet. For the time being, Rockstar has not informed GTA IV players of the possible disappearance of the music tracks.
Previously this happened at GTA: San Andreas, where a patch released for the PC meant that songs were removed from the game without players noticed that. This happened about ten years after the introduction of San Andreas. A similar issue occurred in the PC version of GTA: Vice City, where the game temporarily disappeared from Steam in 2012 due to an issue related to Michael Jackson’s music license.
According to the source on which Kotaku relies, owners can from GTA IV on the PlayStation 3 possibly spring the dance. They would be given the opportunity to download digital versions of the songs to be deleted before 26 April. It is not clear whether this also belongs to players on other platforms
Previously this happened at GTA: San Andreas, where a patch released for the PC meant that songs were removed from the game without players noticed that. This happened about ten years after the introduction of San Andreas. A similar issue occurred in the PC version of GTA: Vice City, where the game temporarily disappeared from Steam in 2012 due to an issue related to Michael Jackson’s music license.
According to the source on which Kotaku relies, owners can from GTA IV on the PlayStation 3 possibly spring the dance. They would be given the opportunity to download digital versions of the songs to be deleted before 26 April. It is not clear whether this also belongs to players on other platforms