Grand Theft Auto IV Set To Lose Some Licensed Music Later This Month

While a lot of the world has seemingly moved on to Grand Theft Auto V, you'd be surprised how many players are still enjoyingGrand Theft Auto IV, and all the open-world shenanigans it provides ten years after its release. But it looks like part of the party will be shutting down at the end of the month.

Relax, you'll still be able to down helicopters with rocket launchers and go bowling and such, but you won't be able to do it to all of your favorite tunes. Kotaku recently reported that some of the rights to music in the game is set to expire on April 28, and, as a result, Rockstar will be updating GTA IV to take them out.

A specific list of music wasn't provided, but more than likely, several of the licensed tracks will be removed from the game. You'll still have a few hits to listen to, just not all.

Kotaku noted that this isn't the first time that Rockstar Games has seen a snafu with licensed music in a game. There was a previous version of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City on PC that had to be updated thanks to a dispute over a Michael Jackson license, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was also patched, resulting in the removal of some songs.

Apparently, Rockstar usually attains a ten-year agreement with its licensed tracks, and once that expires, if the games are still up and in service (and not, say, on a separate product release, like a physical copy), they can be updated to where the songs are taken out. It's a situation that also affects other games as well. For instance, Harmonix regularly removes songs from its Rock Band library after the rights to some of the songs expire.

Rockstar didn't have anything to say on the matter, only that the songs would be removed at month's end. Hopefully we'll have more information soon, so we can prepare ahead of time and download the digital versions of the songs so we can keep on jamming while living that sweet, sweet life in GTA IV's digital world.

Grand Theft Auto IV is available now for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. The game is also backward compatible on Xbox One.