GTA IV's Multiplayer: The Lost Era of Liberty City Online
Before GTA Online, GTA IV had its own multiplayer — 16-player free-roam, deathmatch, race modes. Here's the history, the modes, and why the servers eventually closed.
Five years before GTA Online launched in 2013, GTA IV shipped with its own multiplayer mode — a 16-player free-roam-and-modes system that ran on the original game's servers from 2008 to 2020. The mode was largely forgotten in the GTA Online era, but it was the prototype that informed the GTA Online launch.
Below: what GTA IV multiplayer was, what the modes were, and what happened to it.
Launch and platform
GTA IV multiplayer launched alongside the main game in April 2008 on PS3 and Xbox 360. The PC version launched in December 2008 with the same multiplayer system. The mode was accessed by calling Niko's friend list contact for "Multiplayer" — an in-game framing that was unusual for online gaming at the time.
Maximum lobby size: 16 players. The lobby's host could enable or disable various modifiers (traffic density, NPC density, weather, time of day) before the match began.
The modes
GTA IV multiplayer shipped with 15 distinct modes. The major ones:
Free Mode
Just GTA IV's Liberty City as a 16-player sandbox. No objectives, no scoring, no teams. Free Mode is what most players actually played; the structured modes were less popular.
Deathmatch / Team Deathmatch
Standard deathmatch with the option for team play. The wanted-level system was disabled; players hunted players.
Race / GTA Race
Standard racing modes. GTA Race allowed players to attack each other during the race — combining racing with combat. This was an innovation at the time and a direct ancestor of GTA Online's race modes.
Mafiya Work
A cops-and-robbers-style mode where one team played mob enforcers and the other played escapees.
Cops 'n' Crooks
The most-played structured mode. One team played LCPD officers, the other played criminals. Multiple sub-objectives (escort, capture-the-flag, escape).
Hangman's NOOSE
Co-op mode with up to 4 players defending an NPC against waves of enemy attackers. Hangman's NOOSE is the first proper co-op mode in GTA history and the direct ancestor of GTA Online's later co-op heists.
Bomb da Base II
Multi-stage co-op heist taking on a docked freighter. Five-objective sequence with multiple stages of combat and a final boss-fight equivalent. Considered the most challenging single mode in GTA IV multiplayer.
Turf War
Territory-control mode. Two teams compete for map zones; controlling a zone for time wins it.
Car Jack City
A free-for-all where players steal cars worth points. Highest-value car wins.
Other modes
The remaining modes — including various race variants and the "Bomb the Base I" predecessor — were less-played but technically supported.
Population and longevity
GTA IV multiplayer's population peaked in 2009-2010 with an estimated 50,000-100,000 daily players across all platforms. By 2013, when GTA Online launched, the population was already in decline — most players migrated to GTA V's multiplayer.
The server population dropped further through the 2010s. By 2020, GTA IV multiplayer was technically still functional but had a tiny daily user count.
The 2020 shutdown
In March 2020, Rockstar shut down GTA IV multiplayer entirely. The shutdown was framed as part of the Games for Windows Live (GFWL) decommissioning that affected all GFWL-dependent games. After GFWL shut down, GTA IV's multiplayer was no longer supported on PC.
Console multiplayer was technically still functional after the GFWL shutdown but ran on legacy infrastructure that Rockstar quietly deprecated. By 2022, all GTA IV multiplayer was effectively offline.
The Episodes from Liberty City multiplayer (Lost and Damned's biker modes, Ballad of Gay Tony's club-based modes) shut down in the same wave.
What it influenced
GTA IV multiplayer's design directly informed GTA Online (2013):
- Free Mode as the dominant gameplay layer — GTA Online's freeroam is essentially a scaled-up Free Mode
- Cops 'n' Crooks as a mode template — GTA Online's competitive modes inherit the structure
- Hangman's NOOSE / Bomb da Base II as the co-op heist prototype — GTA Online's heists are the direct descendants
- The phone-based multiplayer entry as the in-game framing — eventually replaced by the dedicated Online launcher
GTA Online's launch in 2013 was, mechanically, "GTA IV multiplayer scaled up by 10x and given persistent character progression."
Can you play it now?
No. GTA IV multiplayer is no longer accessible on any platform. The original main-game campaign remains available (PS3, Xbox 360 backward-compat, Steam, EGS), but the multiplayer is gone.
For the modern GTA multiplayer experience, see GTA Online: Every Heist in Order and the GTA Online roadmap.
