Grand Theft Auto IV is missing from Steam, for now, anyway

Just in time to launch Red Dead Redemption 2 on PC, Rockstar announced their own game launcher for desktop. Despite having both Grand Theft Auto V and San Andreas available on the new digital storefront, Grand Theft Auto IV is still notably absent. Now it's been delisted from Steam as well, though it doesn't actually seem to be related to any grand plans Rockstar have for their own launcher.

As spotted last week by Twitter user Nitomatta, GTA 4 still has a Steam store page but the option to buy it has been removed. Interestingly, the Episodes From Liberty City DLC can still be bought for £15/€15/$20.

"Grand Theft Auto 4 was originally created for the Games For Windows Live platform," Rockstar say in a statement to US Gamer. Apparently Microsoft dropping support for GFWL has kept GTA's publisher from generating new keys to sell the game. "We are looking at other options for distributing GTA4 for PC and will share more information as soon as we can," Rockstar say.

This isn't the first time GTA 4 has seen distribution woes. Back in 2018, Rockstar pushed an update removing a number of songs from GTA 4 due to expiring music licenses. At the time, Alice0 even lamented that perhaps it would be a good time to ditch the GFWL integration. They didn't, naturally, and have apparently waited for the situation to force their hand.

Rockstar haven't said yet how long they expect GTA 4 to be absent from Steam. Presumably they'll find a way to make Nico's adventure available on the Rockstar Launcher in the future though that hasn't been specifically mentioned yet either.

You can get GTA 4 on—well, you can look at its Steam page until further notice, I suppose.