GTA: Vice City ‘temporarily’ pulled from digital distributors
By Jess Colwill on November 19, 2012 at 6:44 pm
Anyone wishing to go back and relive past glories with all the buzz about GTA V at the moment might have trouble going back and purchasing GTA: Vice City. Due to a music licensing issue, Vice City has been pulled from digital distribution sites for what we are assured is a temporary period.
“Due to some music licensing issues, we’ve had to temporarily remove Vice City PC from digital stores. We’ll make it available again as soon as possible,” said Rockstar in a statement to GameInformer. If you’ve already purchased the game on Steam (for example) you should still be able to install and play the game, the issue is solely with purchasing it.
There’s no word on which song(s) are causing the issue, but there is a rumour that it is MJ’s “Wanna Be Startin’ Something”. Rockstar have neither confirmed nor denied this rumour. Despite everything, Rockstar reps have said that none of this will affect the upcoming release of Vice City to mobile platforms.
Source: GameInformer
You can use the following bbCode
[i], [b], [img], [quote], [url href="http://www.google.com/"]Google[/url]
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
facebook
twitter
google+
rss
Why would a music company bother removing such an old game from sale because of licensing? Then again their greed has no bounds so carry on.
Shows copyright model needs to be fixed. I normally turn off music in games anyway
I turn music off in most games but will always leave it running in GTA. Love finding just the right track for my current activity (it made NFS Hot Pursuit all the more annoying in police chases where you only had the dramatic orchestral music and I wanted a pumping track).
Vice city is still the bomb!
It has nothing to do with greed. Music, when sold in different regions, gives royalties to different people (not including the music and lyrical royalties). It just would not make sense for such a big artist as Michael Jackson to have one record label handling distribution because I cannot imagine there is a record label out there that has a worldwide reach (Sony Afghanistan? Virgin Siberia?).
So when you release something that IS going world wide that the record labels have paid for you suddenly have yourself a very messy licencing issue…
pinothyj,
Why are they targetting a 10 year old game over music licensing issues? Don’t the RIAA have anything better to do?
I doubt the RIAA has anything to do with it. And if it is MJ music than I imagine it is to do with recent deals being made and assets and ownership changing hands or maybe a deal that was not accurately fleshed out.
This IS the very reason the legal department take up so many names in the credits…
When was the last time you played it? It feels more rough and archaic than even older games. San Andreas was a huge improvement.
ElectroTyrian,
RIAA is US only. There’s nothing to suggest that it has anything to do with them.
one of the best game tracks 2 in vice city