I've heard about issues from friends who bought hardcopies. And they all exceeded the recommended system specs. I find it pretty odd that all 3 of my friends that bought this game are part of that 1%. I know I'm certainly wouldn't pick it up, if I hadn't already played it.

I bought it, found it pretty damn laggy on 25% settings, medium textures and high render quality.. Maybe 15-20 fps if I'm lucky.

I cracked the game, BAM, solid 30-40fps on 100% and very high render quality...
My system is hardly out of date? 3,6ghz core2duo, 4gb 1066ddr2, 88gts512(777/1008)

Runs very well, while using up a little more than 500mb video memory according to options, but only when securom has been defeated.

Am I really supposed to be punished for actually going out and buying this game?

I have the game and here are my specs:

P5Q-Deluxe
Q9450 @ 3.85GHZ
4870 1GB @ 850/925 = 8.11 ATI CCC & Drivers
4GB= 2x 2GB G-SKill DDR2 1066 @ 1156
3x WD Sata2 160GB 16MB Cache RAID 0
SilverStone Decatholon 750W Modular
Vista Ultimate 64 Bit Service Pack 1 , all updates Direct X and all other misc. stuff..

The game has an obvious memory leak in it nd eventually my graphics start disapearing and game will lock up my system.. I would like for them to say upgrade this or that to me because I have everything done already.

I find this interesting... Do I smell another law suit?? I think I do it smells like a law suit, it must be a law suit.. I am so fing tired of this god damn secur rom crap. Just fing trash it.. I swear I do not want some crap installed on my Computer that is going to trash all my hard work and all my precious time I have spent on getting my system up to date with all patches exc because now I have a god damn root kit on my PC that has just fing messed everything up..

And yes, I have a legal copy. I bought it from GameStop after the GameSpot downloadable version failed because of some packing error, a file was corrupted and there support number kept hanging up on me saying they were to busy to take my call and their email support takes 24-48 hours to respond so, I said f it and bought a DVD version from their store down the street from me.

I will not buy any game with SecuROM installed.

terrible company!
i cant see any texture but the road, no buildings, no people, nothing!
my system is way beyonf the recomanded!
it's a very lame port, not at all.
and i think they meant 1% is not having this problems.

You know what makes me the most angry is that my controller is not being picked up by the game. I have had every other game I have played lately pick it up and work with it right away but, not this one. I think it has to do with Microsoft wanting you to buy their shiaty xbox 360 controller for the PC. I want to use my controller that I paid $50 for thank you very much. Besides for that I really do love the game even though, it needs heavy patching at this point. I want secur rom to die off already as it is the dumbest piece of shiat I have ever seen in my life. I am so supprised they haven't decided to kill this damn thing yet. QUIT PUNISHING PURCHASERS IDIOTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In the past, PC versions always have higher graphic quality and extra contents. In fact, that's the reason why I always wait for the PC version before I played the game. I guess they really wants to kill PC gaming.

get the razor1911 crack and the game runs alot better

why are you using a controller on a PC? mouse + keyboard is much better for games like GTA4.

SecureRom prevalent nature in the current crop of games despite promises to not include it by publishers makes me not want to purchase modern games ever until that stance changes. Just check the Wikipedia article on SecureRom and you will quickly see even publishers that promise securerom-free experience still put it in.

These false promises must be punished by not purchasing the game. That is the only way to send the message.

I will give it a go and report back thank you.

I would like to say I didn't have that problem, my specs are q6600@3.4ghz, 4gb ddr2 ram, ati 4850, 2x 500gb hd, 64 windows vista and i get playable 35-40 fps. I got the game off from steam too.
my youtube channel is www.youtube.com/vagmonster666 if you would like to check out my videos (i made 2 gta 4 vids so far )

I guess I will have to reinstall windows again then huh. Either that or Steam fixed their exe to not cause issues like that of the dvd versions. Better yet... I can just enter my key into steam and down load it that way and see if my issue go away.. Thanks, I honestly didn't think steam had it other wise I would have done that from the start.

HOT COFFEE anyone????

HOT COFFEE anyone?

I find it completely unsatisfactory that GTA 4 uses securom , ok granted they dont have an install limit on thier version of securom BUT , it is still there non the less , I just want to scream WHY ? what was teh point if you werent going to make an activation limit ? maybey they just wanted to see if peopel would buy a securom infected game . from teh sounds of what i ahve heard securom is also teh main cause of a serious memory leak in the case of gta4. The thing i find most disgusting about this whole issue , is the original GTA games (1 and 2) were top downview PC only titles. and when good 3d hit rockstar abandoned thier pc consumer base for consoles and then started this policy of throwing the pc gamers bones aka porting the game later. and now theya re going to start infecting our systems with securom too ? sorry iaint buying this time around Rockstar. I don't buy from posers.

I too am having major problems with the game. If you look at gaming forums and GTA fan sites you will also notice that it is clearly more than 1% having this problem. Rockstar is clearly lying.

As much as I hate SecuROM I don't think its the cause of all the problems. This is by far one of the worst ports I have ever seen and I don't think that any simple patches will be able to repair it.

Here is just a short list of problems that I get.

Sometimes get a never ending loading screen.
Shadows are horrible.
Game crashes quite often.
Low FPS no matter how low I set the detail levels.
Major Graphical glitches

And remember that's just a short list.. I think its clear that Rockstar doesn't care about the PC gamers. Maybe they figured they could release one more GTA on the PC and make a quick buck and more profits by making it such a half assed port. I won't be surprised if we don't get the next one...

Sad day for PC gamers... Sad day..

Anyone remember a particular company that released a certain game that was also "Future-proof" and that would run better and look better as PC hardware advanced?

To be honest, i don't think this is a good strategy since most PC gamers will always try cranking up their games at the maximum details and then complain about poor performance. And since a majority of these PC gamers (Or at least the ones we hear the most) have a problem playing whit "Medium" details they'll complain about poorly written code and whatever.

Rockstar may be lazy and doesn't want to improve their code and they're using the "Future-proof" strategy as an excuse.

So if your game runs slow on a mainstream computer then so it may be...but don't bring up any stupid "Future-proof" comment to cover that...one company did that and it backfired back at them.

- Tywald

What company? I'm sorry if I am blind as to who you are talking about.

Could be speaking of "Crysis" from Crytek or the one I always think of is "Messiah" from Shiny Entertainment.

I laughed so hard when I heard this story... Don't get me wrong, I do wish everyone luck with their purchases, I am referring to all the hype that this game was going to be better on PC than the console version. Now we can all see that this is certainly not the case.

I have this game on my console, but honestly I prefer to play it on my computer.

The PC gaming era is not dying, they are KILLING it, with crap like securom.

LOL, 1%? Maybe 90%, every gaming site with forums have hundreds of people bashing rockstar for this.
It has nothing to do with future proofing either, Crysis' graphics KILL gta4, and I get the SAME fps on MAX as i do on bare minimum. How would those idiots exaplain that one?
Rpckstar f'ed up bad and are inventing excuses and reasons that simultaniously call us idiots.
Screw rockstar, i'm returning this game as defective software, as i exceed the reqs and weather its on maximum or bare minimum i get 9 to 21 fps from 1280x800 to 1680x1050.
9 fps on all bare minimum with an x2 @ 3.36 and 4850 with 4 gigs ddr2 = BS

People gave up on customer support when they discovered they get real answers in forums, of course the support channel isn't going to be a hotline.

I read somewhere that GTA4 has a lot of objects which shaders do not do. And that is the exact opposite of the way current GPUs are or something like that.

first bully, now this crappy port -_-

I cracked the game and am getting 35-40 FPS

Here's my specs

E8400 @ 3.0 Ghz
8800 GTS OC 512MB
4 Gigs of ddr2 ram @ 1066 (limited to 3.3 gigs)
XP SP3

However, i don't play the game for my than 10 minutes, because that's how long it goes before freezing and making me hard reboot the system.

Congradulations Rockstar, you had a game with the potential to sell 12 million copies on the PC similiar to SPORE, and effectively reduced it to 500k. I applaud your efforts to reduce your sales, you are really sticking it to those fat cat corporate types by saying, "Hey, we don't need customers."

Wow some people actually manage to play GTA IV. After a couple of hours of installation fun, I can't even get into the game, as the Rockstar Social Club software crashes when launched. This is a requirement and the game won't launch at all. Why did they make the game itself dependent on such a crappy piece of software called Social Club. Many other people have the same problem and can't even get into the game:

http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php [...] 80680&st=0

This sucks big time!