My friend, seems like you have just described STEAM system in there
Uninstalled the game? Uninstall Steam. Done. No traces. No risks. No annoying "insert the CD/DVD and press continue". No third-part copy protection system at all. Just put your Steam account and password once, select "remember my password" and you won't have to login or anything anymore, just click on the shortcut in your desktop and it will open the game, even if steam is not running (it will open steam.exe thought, for account validating, but you won't even notice it opening if you don't have the tasks manager open , and it will be closed after closing the game)
The online activation is Rockstar's fault for using Windows Live Games it wouldn't be necessary if the game only used STEAM for validating.
And of course, how are you going to prove you really own the game without a steam account? What's the problem with that, since there are no other validating systems? And even when you need to activate a serial in a game you bought on STEAM (if the game requires windows live for example), the way Steam do it is just awesome, it just shows on the side of the screen (ingame) the serial of your game when you need it
When it comes to steam account validation, you can just select "remember password" in your computer and you won't have even to remember about it at all.
Some Steam gamed DO come with additional copy protection crap. Rockstar even says that the Steam version will come with additional DRM crap and that uninstalling the game will not remove securom.
The Games for Windows Live stuff is for online playing, it has nothing to do with DRM. It's a bit like Steam, but from Microsoft. It's used to distribute game updates etc.
Rockstar social club is a service from Rockstar, where you can track online scores.
Online activation is something else, it's part of Securom. Without it, you can't play at all. Every time you install the game on another PC, you'll have to do this. Some games limit the amount of times you can install the game, i.e. after 5 installs it locks up and becomes unusable.
BTW, Steam itself is a laugh when it comes to security. Even I was able to find a way to play every Valve game with an account that only had CS 1.6 on it. Online didn't work all the time, but offline did.
Why I hate securom? It has shown in the past that it conflicts with virtual cd drives and development tools. I'm a software engineer... My pc is filled with dev tools. Other than that, I don't like hidden malware on my pc.
Having read through the pc-specific section at gtaforums.com, GTA4-PC seems only one thing: an unmitigated disaster. Obviously you only ever hear the negative issues - people tend not to post if everything's running smoothly, but go mental if there are serious issues.
And a whole lotta people are going mental.
I've not got my copy yet so can't speak from personal experience. But from reading gtaf, there are problems everywhere. People are reporting that no joypads work except the "official" XBox 360 controller, that you need to sign in to GFWL even to save single player games, that basic graphics options are missing such as AA (not surprising it wasn't included given the appalling performance people are having without AA), the Rockstar Social Club application is producing fatal errors, and of course the serious, massive performance problems on all sorts of rigs with either ATi or nViia (although it seems much worse with ATi)... it's baffling that a developer as respected as Rockstar can and will cock it up like this. Simply baffling.
After reading the fine print on installation requirements (it requires internet explorer to be installed as well as games for windows live :really I'm very tempted to cancel my order simply because of that. Dunno, wait and see. The order shows still as empty so I might change it to Fallout 3... looking forward the forum explosions tomorrow...
...especially when I have an ATI machine I'm a bit doubtful that should I even open the package. The earlier GTAs ran without any glitches so I trusted and pre-ordered. I really hope it isn't that bad as it looks now...
I regret i bought it. It's close to unplayable for me and don't look good. Have a [email protected] / 2GB Ram / Gtx280 / Wxp. Well Crysis runs okay on my rig.