Rockstar rolls back Grand Theft Auto 4 update that appeared to be corrupting saves

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A fairly beefy Grand Theft Auto 4 rolled out yesterday, restoring a bunch of songs and radio stations that had been removed from the game earlier this year. It should've been good news—Vice City FM, one of the removed stations, "had some proper '80s pop bangers," and we could all use more of that in our lives—but it didn't work out that way.

As soon as the update went live, reports began appearing on both Reddit and in the Steam forums that the update was corrupting save files. At least one redditor said that completely uninstalling the game—including deleting the folder and savegames—and then reinstalling the game and using cloud saves got things back on track, but that's hardly a practical solution.

Fortunately, no harm was actually done to saves, and everything returned to normal when the update was rolled back.

"There was an issue introduced in yesterday’s update that temporarily gave the appearance that save files were destroyed and the update was recalled," a Rockstar rep explained. "The game should now be reading those save files correctly and we will redeploy the update as soon as we can."

Thanks, Kotaku UK.

Andy Chalk

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.