Reports of Freezing Problems With GTA IV’s DLC
A /gamer reader named Max sent us some info about people having issues with Grand Theft Auto IV’s downloadable content. In his email, he sent us a link to a gamefaqs’ forum and the topic was about freezing problems with the “Lost and Damned” DLC.
Inside the link, some members of the forum who downloaded the extra content have had an unpleasant headache with the game. Apparently, a small portion of people have had freezing with the title.
For instance, drummer2170 said,
“Right after taking out the angels of death or whatever they’re called in the first mission to get billy’s bike, as I’m leaving it froze in the same spot three times.”
Yueske explains that even though he has already put a good amount time into the game, he had numerous experiences where his game froze,
“My freezing has become less constant, but it still happens sporadically. I can play for a good 20 minutes before it will lock up. Driving, walking, pausing, it’s happened during all of them. I’ve managed to progress fairly far into the game, but it doesn’t stop it from being incredibly bothersome.”
However, bulldog907 has only tried the game for a little over a hour, but he had had to restart it more than he would have liked:
“Yup I’ve had the game freeze like 6 times in the 1.5 hours I’ve played it. It’s really frustrating. I’ve had it freeze at different points (once during a mission, once in Burger Shot, once just driving, etc). I have a 60GB Xbox360.”
The list goes on and on. If you head over to the forums right now, you’ll see the absurd number of users who are dealing with this lousy issue.
Thankfully, some people have cleared the cache on the Xbox hard drive and it worked. But for many, the problem still persists.
We should mention that many, if not most of the gamers who downloaded the DLC have not encountered the freezing dilemma. Nonetheless, it sounds like an abundant amount of folks who purchased the content are having an unnecessary problem that must be addressed by Rockstar…and soon!
Have any of you experienced freezing problems with the game? If so, tell us.
March 4th, 2009 at 3:54 am
After the last mission, during the last cutscene, my game freezed. I am pretty lucky with turning on autosave, though, or else I would’ve had to play the last 3-4 missions over again. Sure, they’re great fun, but when you’ve gotten to the ending.. come on!
March 4th, 2009 at 5:37 am
the freezing ive suffered from is only in multiplayer where the screen and everything seizes up for a couple of minutes, then continues as normal.
most people on my friends list have suffered the same thing..
92/100 people have suffered it.
its also affected gta iv a couple of times, not too much though.
hasnt happened to me recently, but others do still get it
March 4th, 2009 at 6:34 am
I’ve tried from disc, hard drive, reinstalling several times, re-downloading, cache clearing, making more space on 120GB hard drive. It freezes every time it tries to load except for the very first time. after that I must sign out, load the game, sign in, load the game and I can play for a little while before getting the dirty disc error (it is installed on hd!) I do not understand how this has not been addressed by Rockstar yet. One thing is for sure, I will never download another dlc from them. Ever. $20 wasted on something that is UNPLAYABLE.
March 5th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
I played all the way through with no problems, but after finishing the game I went back to finish the gang wars, and it started freezing after 2 min. I tried different games and demos off the hard drive, still freezing. I tried removing the hard drive, still freezing. After 2 days of that, I got the ring of death (fortunately, because xbox will service a ring of death for free). They had better offer free repair for everyone now, since this issue is widespread.
Good luck.
March 7th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
I can’t even get passed the first mission because it freezes on me everytime! It’s so frustating because I paid 20 bucks to enjoy the expansion, and I’ve been forced to restart my system 12 times! I’m close to calling rockstar for a refund, because it’s become such a headache that I don’t even want to play it anymore
March 9th, 2009 at 10:16 am
I’ve been having trouble with TLAD now since I downloaded it! It keeps freezing on me randomly, can’t even get into multiplayer either because of ingame mobilephone suddenly freezing. Sent 3 mails to Rockstar since day 1 and still no respons. Talk about horrible support!
March 26th, 2009 at 11:08 pm
I have also encountered freezing with “The lost and the damned”. The freezing I encounter also varies. I usually encounter a game freeze roughly every 20 minutes. This is very disappointing considering I have paid $20 for something that doesn’t work properly. I am so frustrated with it I have given up playing it. Has anyone heard if Rockstar are fixing the problem? Has anyone been able to get a refund?
April 18th, 2009 at 7:59 am
You guys are pretty lucky, i haven’t got anywhere near actually playing the game. It sucks I’ve tried a lot of the things that PaPaFuNk has done and it freezes before i can get to the intro music (I don’t actually know if there is intro music, seeing as I’ve never gotten that far). its so frustrating! i cant even play GTA IV by it’s self anymore this needs to fixed right away.
April 18th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
I had this same thing happen to me, XBOX wasn’t willing to fix my system, even though it would’ve been the 3rd time in 2 years, first 2 being “ring of death” issues. But once the system downloaded the most current update after TLAD was released, thats when the issues started, i hadn’t even purchased the expansion either. so I sold my xbox and got a ps3 instead, and i wish i never even got the 360 in the first place, been nothing but problems
July 28th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
One thing, why its freezing you, 2 words, Microsoft XBOX
August 13th, 2009 at 9:48 am
I Played TLAD one time and it froze while loading a cutscene… NOW I CANT EVEN PLAY IT AT ALL, When I start Up GTA IV It Automatically loads the original game not TLAD. I spent $25 to get this horrible game and I cant even play it! Any tips would be appreciated…
November 1st, 2009 at 4:46 am
i purchased the disc ‘episodes from liberty city’ and both games (lost & damned + gay tony) freeze up within a few minutes of loading. installing on the HD makes no difference. i’ve email rockstar but i doubt i’ll hear anything, and if they release a patch i’ll eat my perseus suit.
December 30th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
I purchased the DLC content BoGT. I played for about 10 mins with a buddy in multi then he left the game. I got booted back to the single player right. Then the game locks up. My entire 360 locked up and I had to restart it. I tried to reload the game and it wouldnt register the dlc content. So I went through the normal game and tried to start a New game in BoGT, it loads up and gets stuck on the loading screen and locks up my xbox 360.
I wrote Rockstar and email about 3 weeks ago and I still havent gotten a response. Great to know my microsoft points were well spent. Total waste of money and my time.
Xbox360′s in general are garbage and still are garbage. Trying to save up money to get a PS3.
March 8th, 2010 at 6:00 pm
Hi
I’ve recently purchased Episodes of Liberty City and started to experience freezing problems when playing in multiplayer mode. Never happened with GTA IV orignal.
I’ve also downloaded it to my HD, which by the comments in the thread before should have helped to rid myself of this disease but no.
Cheers
Ian
November 19th, 2010 at 10:51 am
Hi
I bought episodes from liberty city yesterday as the independent disc version and installed it. As soon as i tried it the first time iv’e had about 80 freezes in TLAD and TBOGT together. I have the PC version so it seems both Xbox and Win XP has severe problems with the add-ons.
I sent a mail to Rockstar about a hour ago, before i found this site. I hope there has been some progress on the feedback since March..
Love Zeke
December 31st, 2010 at 11:54 pm
I’ve recently bought a beast of a pc 2 gtx 480′s running sli, 6 core cpu, 6 gig of ram. This is the only game i’ve got which still lags constantly even of half settings. It’s pathetic
March 21st, 2011 at 10:22 am
Hi again.
Since last time i wrote nothing has changed BUT one thing has came up.
I felt nostalgic so i installed GTA San Andreas on my pc and started to mod cars, skin etc. etc.
The thing i came up with is that SA crashes EXACTLY as my DLC, (first the textures of houses become blurry, then all cars disappear then the game freezes/crashes) and the reason because SA crashed was that i messed up when modding the Tahoma. The .dff file had some flaw so it wasn’t working.
WELL
As i’ve played TLAD quite much (call me Redneck but it’s my favourite GTA apart from the freezing)and the freezing continued, i was driving around in LC looking for specific cars.
The interesting thing is that i havent seen ANY Willard and only ONE Buccaneer which (TA-DAA)had NO INTERIOR TEXTURE.
This is just a theory but could all the freezing be caused by a simple corruption in the -models- file?
I mean could the game be crashing because it is trying to spawn a certain car that cant be spawned because it’s corrupted??
Anyone having an idea?
Zeke
PS. Rockstar did respond to my email but CLEARLY its my computers fault the game freezes. Still it works PERFECTLY when i play GTA IV with MAX QUALITY GRAPHIX…