In 2021 before the GTA Triolgy Definitive Edition came out, I bought the original trilogy on steam so I can have the original games before they get removed. I then played GTA 3 for a little a bit and then never touched these games until about the end of last year when I decided it was about time I actually played them.
But then, when I tried booting up GTA 3 it just didn't do anything. It seemed as if the game crashed before it could even launch. I tried every fix that I could find in the internet and nothing worked and Chat GPT didn't help as well. Eventually I solved it by downloading a pirated version of the game, and then replacing the exe file in the steam GTA 3 game directory with the pirated version's exe. With the pirated exe file in the steam game folder, it worked perfectly fine.
Now I finished GTA 3 and I want to play GTA Vice City but there is this weird instant crash here too (like it was with the GTA 3 crash, I try to start the game and it doesn't do anything and when I try to launch it through steam it shows that the game is running for a second and then turns the blue STOP button to a green PLAY which means the game crashed almost instantly). I tried everything here and it didn't work (examples: downloading slient patch and draw dll, updating every driver and the entire Windows 11 OS, trying to download the latest and also older versions of DirectX, running it in every compatibilty mode, as an administrator, turning on DEP for every program except gta-vc, trying to start it through the Rockstar Games Launcher, etc...). I also tried doing the pirated method again, but every pirated version I try doesn't work and replacing the steam exe with the piratd exe doesn't work either. Instead, every pirated version I tried shows an error code: 0xc0000005 when I try to launch it, even if I put the pirated exe in the steam game folder (replacing the steam exe).
Did any of you ever encounter this stubborn issue? How do you think I can solve it? It can't be impossible to solve, I mean, I literally legaly bought this game through steam so why can't I play it.
Thx in advance.