Rockstar dropped the ball

I have recently acquired a sparkling new computer-rig made of pure electric-current asskickery, so of course I looked around to buy some equally kickass games, and saw that GTA4 came out (for the PC) recently. I hurried to Amazon (Yes, i know, I’m a cooperate whore), raised my finger to click and buy, but then, just as my finger was on the verge of sending the signal to Amazon, 3rd party corporations, and probably the government for good measure, I glimpsed at the 1.5 star rating. GTA3, being something which probably cost me my soul, sanity, and prospects of a good career, demanded of my fanboy-self, that I flame and, if possible, wreak terrible vengeance on the infidels who unjustly voted on the (arguably) fourth coming of my lord. When I actually saw the complaints of the 1star-raters however, my rage was quickly extinguished and turned into the opposite: Pure frustration about the current state of PC-gaming, combined with disdain and loathing of Rockstar.

I knew that Rockstar would probably violate both my computer and my sense of self-worth with some sort of evil copy-protection scheme, but this time I was prepared to throw my ideals overboard like some stranded guy roasting his best friend on a pike, while furiously masturbating to memories of him having his way with his friend’s wife.

Despite my moral downfall, one thing I still cannot bring myself to do is to accept Windows Live. Just like Steam I reject this sort of monolithic paternalism in its entirety. I do NOT want to connect to the internet to save my game. Period. I have 1 Terabyte of storage on my PC, I can save MILLIONS of GTA4 savefiles, I want to have it on my local harddrive, end of story. After activation I want to have the game on my PC, still activated, till the day the music dies, and I want to play the game even without being connected to the internet. Why do I want this? Because I actually care about my privacy. Yes, remember that word? Privacy? You’ve heard of it, right? I will not give anyone the right to know what I am doing in the privacy of my own 4 walls, noone has the right to know when I play GTA4, for how long, and how much I suck at it. Neither Rockstar nor Microsoft is entitled to this information. They are entitled to my money, afterwards they are entitled to going away to disappear into the meadows of obscurity. And maybe come out once in a while to deliver some patches, which, reading the reviews, I think they are going to need. Wow.

Windows-Live is just another travesty like Windows Vista, which is a clunky piece of unnavigable trash. Vistas menu-structure is simply horrendous, and the control panel, no words for the control panel – I mean did their designers purposely decide to force me through 10 minutes of searching till I actually find anything? Can menu-names be any more uninformative? I don’t even want to find out. And now they expect me to welcome Live into my PC? No. Matchmaking and playing online were NEVER a problem EXCEPT in the rare occasions in which companies decided that selling out to companies, like the one behind Gamespy, was somehow reasonable business practice.

Another problem is this Rockstar “Social Club”-hogwash. Does anyone in their right mind actually give a shit about “sharing user profiles” with other people, running around virtually killing people and blowing up cars/buildings/playgrounds? What the hell is wrong with these people?

I know I could be potentially be shooting myself in the foot, since this is wordpress after all, and lets face it, it’s a platform for sexually unsatisfied losers to talk about how much Rockstar is pissing them off, but there has to be a difference! And there is of course, because I actually write here on my own free will, while this social club nonsense is imposed upon me, if I want to play the game. You simply know that a service is going to suck if they actually require you to use it, and not give it to you as an option. But of course they do force it, because if they wouldn’t, then noone would give a damn.

Rockstar, I’ve been a loyal customer since GTA1 – but there is always a time to say goodbye. I can’t say that you’ve always treated me nicely, because most of the time you’ve been a bug riddled hassle, but we all have our faults. But this time your constant bitching and jealous hand-holding was simply too much for me to bear. I really hope you learn your lesson, and if not, well then go to hell.

By the way, I tried to include some pictures to make this wall of text more appealing, but ill be damned if I have to load another one of these fucking flash animations on their homepage – HTML simply isn’t good enough anymore it seems.

GTA4 kills once again!

According to Reuters, the distribution of the game “Grand Theft Auto 4″, hereby denoted as GTA4,  has been pulled in Thailand by a game-distributor, due to a teenager robbing and then killing a 54-year-old taxi driver. Newspapers reported the teenager said, he did not want to kill him at first, but killed him when he met with resistance. Police Chief Veeravit Pipattanasak told Reuters how the youth just wanted to find out, if robbing a taxi in real life was as easy as robbing one in the game.

The assailant’s parents said their son was polite and diligent, and the police said he did not seem to have mental problems during questioning.

Reuters also reports about a senior official at the Culture Ministry of Thailand, stating, that this incident was “[a] wake-up call for authorities to tackle the issue of violent video games“.

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First of all: It doesn’t matter if the guy ’seemed’ to have no mental problems. If he murdered because he wanted to find out, if robbing a cab is as easy as not getting your dick caught while zipping your fly, he is a goddamn nutcase and belongs inside a rubber cell. Furthermore, parents seem to have a misconception about making kids “polite and diligent”, and thinking that this somehow completes their parenting responsibilities. As long as kid doesn’t curse and brings out the trash, everything else is dandy. Maybe if they would have told their young kid, that robbing a cab and stabbing people aren’t good moves, instead of drinking and wasting their time watching soaps, maybe then they wouldn’t have a murderer as their son. If they would have spent some time with the kid, then the boy would have known that robbing people gets you nowhere fast.

The official talking about how this is a wakeup call also seems to have the wrong idea about what the cause of this dilemma is. No, I’m not talking about the difficulty of GTA4 carjacking being too low, I’m talking about dipshit parents and idiotic schools not teaching their kids/pupils what they need to know in life. If anything, this is a wakeup call for everyone able to discern fantasy from reality. I also bet the newspapers bitching about GTA4 will push the teenagers’ diligence and “politeness” in front of everyone’s faces, as if to say, look, a nice polite boy was ULTIMATELY CORRUPTED. At least he didn’t fly a helicopter into a building, waiting to be respawned. I hope the youth didn’t find the “get out of jail free card” beforehand, so Bubba can finally teach him something about how painful reality really is.

Jack Thompson should really take on this case: GTA4 murder simulation too easy, lack of difficulty may cause delusion and death! Rockstar must immediately patch the game, to make the player first brutally struggle and kill the taxi driver to be able to take his car, if Rockstar wants to keep selling this game.

On another note, the source is quite misleading. Thailand didn’t halt the distribution of the game, a distributor did. I’m not sure if this distributor is a monopolist in their country, but I doubt it somewhat. The news also makes no mention of any sort of ban.