Ten years after its launch, a number of songs from Grand Theft Auto IV are going to be ditched from the game.

The news was broken by Kotaku UK, with that site's American branch sourcing a confirmation from developer Rockstar. The games giant says that "certain songs" are being removed just to licensing restrictions, but the outfit claims to be looking into replacing what is lost.

Just what songs are going to be cut is not clear yet, but Rockstar does say that the Russian-centric Vladivostok FM is going to be hit hard.

There's no word on time-frame for this process as of yet. 

“Due to music licensing restrictions, we are required to remove certain songs from the in-game soundtrack of Grand Theft Auto IV and its Episodes, in particular, a large portion of the Russian pop station, Vladivostok FM,” a Rockstar rep said.

“However we are replacing some of those songs with a new set of songs on that station. We will update our customer support website with new information as soon as it is available.”

This isn't the first time that Rockstar has run into licensing problems with its Grand Theft Auto series. The PC version of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City temporarily ditched a number of Michael Jackson songs, while songs were removed from follow-up Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas with a patch.