Grand Theft Auto 4 will soon have some of its songs removed

Believe it or not, this month will mark ten years since the release of Grand Theft Auto 4. But rather than celebrating, Rockstar will be removing a bunch of songs from the game.

As first reported by Kotaku, a handful of 10 year licensing agreements for songs in the game’s soundtrack will expire on April 26 meaning Rockstar will have to patch them out. Though Kotaku’s sources have said “a lot” of songs are going to be removed, Rockstar itself hasn’t given a specific list. 

This, of course, isn’t the first time we’ve seen this happen to a game that’s been out for a number of years; in 2014 a large number of songs had to be removed from San Andreas and only last year Alan Wake was removed from Steam and the Xbox Store entirely due to a licensing issue with music.

Kill my vibe

While San Andreas owners were angry that they weren’t warned a patch they downloaded would remove songs from the game rather than add anything to it, Grand Theft Auto 4 owners on PS3 will apparently have a chance to work around the expired licenses.

According to Kotaku, at some point before April 26 PS3 owners will receive a system message which will prompt them to download digital versions of the songs that are to be removed, allowing them to keep them in the game. It’s not exactly clear how this will work, or if Xbox and PC owners will have the same option. 

Whatever the outcome, if you’re still bowling with Roman just be aware that any upcoming patches to the game will be removing content rather than adding it.

Emma Boyle

Emma Boyle is TechRadar’s ex-Gaming Editor, and is now a content developer and freelance journalist. She has written for magazines and websites including T3, Stuff and The Independent. Emma currently works as a Content Developer in Edinburgh.