Imagine watching a copy of a movie you bought 20 years ago. Now imagine that soundtrack being gutted because of expired licenses. You wouldn't stand for that and honestly, I don't know why we are either.
I get your point, but the OCD in me has to point out that movie licenses generally aren't the same situation.
You're talking about one or two songs by a popular artist being licensed for use in a movie vs 100+ being licensed for use in a video game, hence
needing to cut corners for a sane licensing budget (search for 'perpetuity' and some terms really familiar to this thread should come up).
Unless you meant the film's soundtrack outside of songs, which doesn't run into this issue (along with regular game soundtracks that don't sync pop music) since the core problem here (aside from Rockstar's colossal mismanagement of the issue) has to do with how recording/publishing labels simply don't understand why their terms are absurd for video games.
Stepping back from San Andreas and looking at the big picture, there honestly are two solutions going forward for games:
1) Developers stop licensing dozens of tracks per game. Hence the budget for 'perpetuity' makes sense. (Not gonna happen for GTA)
2) Music labels essentially stop being asses and take the time to understand why games are a different ballgame from other previously established sync license rules, and hence draft a contract specific to games that takes all its quirks like sequels, remakes, ports, DLC, digital distro, etc into account. (Not gonna happen if any indication is the way RIAA stamps its feet and cries foul whenever bits of its pie is taken away)
3) People just accept that this is how this is going to be for games like GTA,
BUT developers take greater care in making sure the contracts state that (if for a limited duration sync) previously purchased copies that were created,
in any format including digital retain the right to continue to have access to that content, and then subsequently
not mess up by failing to take the proper steps to ensure only new copies have that content pulled. Bolded being important since they did that for Vice City and somehow dropped the ball hard here, as JaseC has mentioned multiple times.
wait isnt illegal to remove the song from people that bought the game BEFORE the license expiration date?
Apparently not. That's why we're all even here now discussing this.
If you want to be anally accurate, we aren't sure if it's a mistake on Rockstar's part, (hence 'yes, it's illegal') or not (hence 'no, it's legal'), which would depend on the exact contents of the sync contract. Unless it differs from Vice City, I'm leaning towards "they messed up".