
You earn GFWL achievements in this version of GTA IV, which if you have an XBOX and sign in with the same account, will add to your XBOX LIVE gamerscore. You will have to install GFWL first, which you can get here. You have to sign into this for multiplayer (LAN and online, though nobody plays this version anymore) and to activate the game.

You can set it back after activation.įinally, it has Games For Windows LIVE. When activating it via Securom you must set your PC's date to before April 2013 or it will fail. It also has Rockstar Games Social Club, which you can sign into, or skip by installing at least GTA IV patch 1.0.7.0 and EFLC patch 1.1.2.0. This has a Securom activation limit of five activations I think, but you can revoke an activation by uninstalling the game. You shouldn't need the RGL (or Steam, optional) afterwards and you get some quality-of-life fixes to boot.Įach DVD copy of GTA IV (and EFLC) comes with a DVD key. If you're only against installing the Rockstar Games Launcher and not Steam, I think your best course of action would be to pick up the game on Steam instead and downgrade it. If you mean said keys can only be used for the game it was packaged with, then I wouldn't know anything about that. I don't quite understand this question but yes, retail copies contain a product key for activation.

Is there a code or key that is unique to each copy in order to play it? I believe there are workarounds for those, though.

I don't think so, but you may have trouble installing a retail copy of the game on modern versions of Windows because both of the DRM solutions it employs - Games for Windows Live and SecuROM - are not fully compatible.

I was looking into buying a GTA IV CD rom version from eBay and playing that instead but im seeing some stuff that implies you might need the rockstar launcher to play it?
