Before GTA 5 was launched for Xbox 360 and Playstation, it was widely known as the most anticipated game of the year. Now, after beating several records and after receiving one positive review after another, GTA V became one of the most important and most appreciated games of all time. There’s only one problem: PC users cannot yet enjoy the game as Rockstar launched it only for consoles.
Moreover, Rockstar officials refused to provide details and predictions regarding the release of the PC version of the game. Fortunately, until the last second, we will have rumors from inside people close to the company which give us some hope.
The newest information comes from Eurogamer, confirming the first quarter of 2014 as the official release date for GTA 5 PC. Apparently, the timeline will follow the same system initiated in 2008 with the release of GTA 4. At that time, eight months have passed between the release of the console version and the PC version of the game.
Meanwhile, a petition meant to associate some real numbers with the interest shown to GTA 5 PC reached a fabulous figure of six hundred thousand signatures. The interest however may cause serious problems for the GTA V PC fans that lost their patience. How? By stimulating new ways of spreading viruses.
The virus problem
Every time fans of popular games have to wait for several moths between different version releases, viruses and security problems arise. The same thing happened with the GTA 5 PC.
Every time a popular game is released for consoles but not for PC’s, fake versions shortly appear on torrents and other means of multimedia downloads on the Internet. Thus, thousands of users and GTA fans have been fooled by a torrent titled “GTA V Full PC Game”. They downloaded 18 GB of data, installed the so-called GTA V PC game and found out that their computers stopped responding.
Even if we think that these people have succumbed to temptation without much reasoning, we should not blame them all the way. The installer looked pretty legitimate to the end. However, after installing the files, the users are prompted with a message that asks them to fill some forms with all kinds of personal information on a website that has nothing to do with Rockstar Games in order to receive the key for the game. We know, at that moment, all of them should have stopped and asked themselves about why a pirated installer would give original keys for nothing. For thousands and thousands of GTA 5 PC fans, this was not the case.
The first lesson to be learned from this story is that a little more serious documentation is absolute necessary before downloading a game that hasn’t been released yet, not officially anyway. The second lesson to be learned is that torrents are always the simplest but still the wrong way to purchase a game. The third lesson however is the most important one: if something looks too good to be true… then it probably is.