Piracy probem plagues GTA IV release

[HEXUS]

The PAL Xbox 360 version of GTA IV has been made available on some torrent sites.

Read more.

[SmileyUK]

the copy can only be played on modded consoles. I dont think it will affect sales that much though. I know 3 people with modded consoles and 2 of them will be buying gta and the third wont get it at all.

Im just hoping my shopto preorder arrives

[pauldarkside]

I hope their boxes end up with the RROD

[dangel]

Most '360 games (and ps3 and wii) appear on naughty places - this isn't anything new in all honesty. GTAIV will sell regardless and lots of people will get gold plated swimming pools.

[Bleak]

Piracy will always be an issue especially since a continuously growing number of people have high speed internet connections. The main limit in this case is how many people actually have their consoles chipped.

[gtech]

Someone in the hexus forums said they had downloaded it, tried finding out who said it so i could "tell them off" but whoever it was must have edited their post becuase i cant find it now..

6.73gb sounds small for the whole game, i know its zip files but...
You expect this kinda stuff for pc, but consoles!! still nothing new, you can even get ps3 games on torrents but how the hell that works??? why bother...just wait and by it.

[Knoxville]

Both the PAL and NTSC versions are up now, a certain well known torrent site lists that two and half thousand people are downloading it as I type which in fairness for a game thats expected to ship over six million copies on launch is barely a drop in the ocean. I imagine Rockstar won't be best pleased but it's still not gonna make a dent in sales.

[Whiternoise]

It probably won't be as bad as they make out, since the people who play it pirated can't get any achievements as far as i know - or at least they can, but MS is sure to be heavy handed on them..

[Carlh]

Someone in the hexus forums said they had downloaded it, tried finding out who said it so i could "tell them off" but whoever it was must have edited their post becuase i cant find it now..

6.73gb sounds small for the whole game, i know its zip files but...
You expect this kinda stuff for pc, but consoles!! still nothing new, you can even get ps3 games on torrents but how the hell that works??? why bother...just wait and by it.

6.73gb is compressed therefore it is unlikely to be far off the capacity of dual layer media I would imagine.

Also Steven the NTSC release is available already it was released a few hours after the PAL version by a group calling themselves 101

With regard the acheivements from what I gather anyone that has this game - including the ones that have got a retail version wont have the achievements showing on xbox.com until the 29th - MS did the same with Halo 3 as quite a few stores released this early as well.

[looney]

How do games come out on pirate copies, before the game has even been realsesd??

(unless its already been released in other countrys)

[alsenior]

usually leaks at the pressing plant.

one will fall into the pocket of a machinist or delivery driver.

[Steven W]

If it's a dev kit version, I'm guessing one of the big gaming review sites, magazines who have a dev kit or someone internally at Rockstar.

Whoever smelt it dealt it...

[Spud1]

This happens with almost every single game, movie, song, <generic_digital_product> out there..and the vast majority of high profile products are leaked out prior to release from xyz source.

Nothing new, nothing to worry about