PC gamers ordinarily aren’t a trusting lot, but Rockstar in particular has a bad rep on the platform. “If your internet is down briefly or the Rockstar servers are down, you won’t be able to play single-player.” “The game is now always-online for its single-player,” they said. But there’s also an ‘activation check’ when the game is already booting up now that fails when my firewall blocks GTA5.exe.” The player had blocked that executable because they only used GTA 5’s single-player modes. “The launcher flat out refuses to run when blocked on my firewall. “There are two levels of online checking now,” reported redditor Average_Tnetennba. PC gamers now suspect the publisher had ulterior DRM motives for games they bought elsewhere. Regardless, the timing is terrible for Rockstar, which announced the new launcher on Tuesday and offered a free copy of 2004’s Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas as an inducement for downloading it. “We are aware of an issue that is affecting some players’ ability to play in Offline Mode and we are currently looking into it,” Rockstar wrote in the ticket. PC gamers who have installed Rockstar Games’ new, proprietary launcher say it effectively turns their copies of Grand Theft Auto 5 into an always-online game - even the single-player portions.īased on a Rockstar Games support entry posted online, this could be unintentional.
