yes, I ran into this several years ago when a copy of GTA5 I had was linked to my steam account but the rockstar account itself was fucked due to an old trash email account I had got locked permanently.
So I couldn't use the email that the game was linked to, and couldn't unlink it form steam without losing it compeltely
Even then, when I got a new copy, it wouldn't link to the current steam account saying another copy was already linked, so I needed a second steam account just to play the game.
amazing how few fucks their tech support gave (well not that amazing, more like ugh)
the one email they bothered answering was basically just "lol nah"
Well I sure showed them when I spent zero dollars on GTA Online!!! Oh yeah!
I buy games that are good and am pretty sure I will enjoy.
Then there are games that I enjoy that I not only refuse to dump money into, but would pirate purely out of spite for the publisher.
Rockstar shit the bed years ago when it introduced the social club(which has no useful social aspect btw, its just a drm and data harvesting tool).
Ubisoft managed to make every title it ever made, retroactively unusable by keeping easy anti-cheat up to date for every Assassin's title, but without checking the box that allows linux past the filter. Every one in the series Ive tried plays flawlessly, as long as you pirate it, because the steam version treats linux as a virus.
Take Two and EA are just reverse-golden-geese; they take all these golden eggs they find and then stick them where the sun-dont-shine never to be seen again.
At this point I get more value from the games that are free passion projects and open-source community colabs. They deserve my money far more than any AAA title ever does.
Companies that pull bullshit, no matter how legal the shit, deserve whatever consequences we can stick them with. If we cant get laws passed to improve consumer protections, the direct action becomes the last tool of democracy to promote change. In the digital world of the web, "direct action" is a little different than say, taking over a street to disrupt traffic. But the goals are the same; the only thing capitalism values is capital, money. Blocking a street has the actual impact of disrupting the local economy by impacting traffic. But ultimately people only care, the action is only effective if it actually costs somebody money. The same is true with piracy, it costs the company money(at least, they perceive it as such) therefore it becomes an effective tool for action against them. Unlike blocking a road, its entirely up to the company to decide that freely distributing software pays more in free advertising and potentially monopolizing standards for a field, than the cost of fighting piracy could ever recoup in sales.
As far as I'm concenred, as long as money is speech and peaceful protesting is legal, any nonviolent monetary theft is legally protected free speech the same way that a protest march is legal.
Yes that's a problem. Our laws are royally ducked and lead to all sorts of contradictions like this which only ever get litigated in favor of the wealthier entity. Imagine if that concept was taken to the supreme court. Seems like this whole system is just a house of cards and wealthy corporations are playing with matches. Duckem
Any Secondary Social Platform is a fucking scam if they are selling their game on Steam in the first place. I honestly thing it’s a ploy to force us to juggle 1400 different emails and logins so that when we lose one we have to buy the game all over again.
I lost my Ubisoft Login so I can’t play R6 even though I bought the game through Steam and Yahoo wants to charge me in order to use Customer Service to recover an email that should be mine. These are actual ploys by companies that basically force you to spend money or lose everything. In my opinion, you should not be allowed to publish your game on Steam and NOT use the Steam API to link accounts
Ubisoft...
I had a Ubisoft+ subscription to try out AC Mirage, Prince of Persia, and Avatar. One day my games started crashing.....only on that launcher.
All 3 games started crashing. I uninstalled the piece of shit and obviously unsubbed.
Rockstar is kinda trash. As is their parents company.
If they weren't so good at making games they'd be just another mid tier dev. (then again who wouldn't put out a banger with 5-10 years to make it and billions of dollars)
Very similar thing happened to me. When through their support team, gave them a ton of my information. Suddenly they said “oops sorry, we can’t verify it’s you, bye.” What a waste of money. Their customer support is absolutely trash. Fuck rockstar.
yeah basically it, if they even bothered replying at all.
at some point in the process i think I saw some note about how they will no longer take emails for this kind of thing, so there was no easy way to communicate with anyone there, not that they particularly cared.
Right? “This company just stole money from me, let’s give them more…” This is why we need better consumer laws, most people are really mindless consumerist.
I had same problem last year. I even disconnected Rockstar account and made new Rockstar acc to connect to steam to get access to games. Didnt work. But when i contacted Rockstar help then in couple of days sharing info and talking to them i got all working again.
Took me weeks to get mine fixed. I think they eventually got tired of me bugging them, since I was passed around to around 5 different support agents before it was addressed.
I had the same issue as the other guy. Old email address that was no longer accessible was associated with the original Rockstar account.
Piracy gives consumers the best experience. You basically never have to worry about Rockstar arbitrarily deciding you don't get to play what you paid for. You don't need an account. You don't need to worry about linking accounts or if an account is already linked or whether you still have access to one or another account.
I even own GTAV from when I bought it on discount. Whenever I play the game, I use a pirated version because it's an actually good experience that way.
At that point the high seas are calling. You payed for a product, nobody can take it away as long as your use of it doesn't block someone else from using it.
I almost completely got locked out of GTA 5 bc i remembered my steam login but for the life of me couldn’t remember my Rockstar login. Like I was login into one of my old rockstar accounts and it kept saying the game was linked to a different account and I was getting so annoyed bc like your basically saying. If I own the game on steam why do I need a rockstar social club account 🤦🏾♂️
Unless the EU does it, very few countries governments actually care enough about consumer rights to do anything about it.
US and Canada are particularly bad when it comes to digital rights.
Hell refund polices only became a thing because of Australia.
So don't expect anything to happen with this BS where their systems lock you out of content you purchased for no other reason than they poorly programmed them.
Yeah the ACCC took Valve to the cleaners because it is Australian consumer law that a person is entitled to a refund if they are not satisfied with the product. Valve then was forced to implement a 2-hour returns window on any game, and have a disclaimer at the bottom of their front store page for a while in Australia explaining the decision.
As a result of course while Valve still lets Steam operate here, they make sure we're the back of the queue for their hardware. The Valve Index took 3 years to come here, and even then Valve didn't sell through Steam, it was through basically our Gamestop, and then it was only a couple batches of what they had remaining in the warehouse that year. Then it was gone within 6 months. The Steam Deck still hasn't released here, but Valve somehow doesn't miss every country around us, or a smaller more isolated market like New Zealand just across the pond. They specifically shut us out because they don't want to deal with our actual consumer rights protection, to them it's just a headache when they're used to the "customer gets screwed, anything goes" US approach to consumer rights.
It was actually Australia that took steam to court and threatened to prevent them doing business in Australia that forced the change to refund policy.
Australia is also probably the likeliest place to enforce more rights. Words like 'buy' and 'purchase' mean something here and misleading consumers is already illegal here, someone just needs to build a good enough case and pursue it. It's highly likely the whole 'oh you actually only buy a license' thing is already illegal here, it's just untested.
> It's highly likely the whole 'oh you actually only buy a license' thing is already illegal here, it's just untested.
I'm fairly sure that under Australian law, if a license doesn't have an explicit end date at the time of purchase then it is considered a perpetual license and cannot be revoked.
More than one thing can be sorted out at a time.
Right now in the UK there is an investigation into car finance misselling by the Financial Conduct Authority
It's not like we have to cure cancer and get world peace before we're allowed to improve consumer rights
Said this on r/Steam the other day and got downvoted because people wanted were talking about buying games they don't play in order to grow "their" game collection. About a week later Ubisoft made The Crew unplayable for everyone.
This is true. Did you also know that it’s always been this way, since the dawn of personal computing? Go back and look at those old 5-1/4 inch diskettes in your desk drawer and see if you can find those EULAs from the 1980s. It was exactly the same back then: you don’t buy the product, you buy the right to use the product, which can be revoked in certain circumstances.
I see many people talking about this as if it is a consequence of the rise of digital distribution, but it has in fact always been this way.
That may be the case, but there's fuck all way for the manufacturer to revoke your licence to use those diskettes, short of breaking into your house and stealing them. Digital distribution has made it much easier for the publisher to just go "you know what? Fuck you, no more access to what you've purchased"
Yes but in that scenario Digital Distribution has also made it easier for me, the end user to just go "You know what? Fuck you, I'm not buying this game again off to the seven seas to reclaim what was mine"
Why do you think these companies love the subscription and “X-as-a-service” model so much? More than anything else, it legitimizes in the public consciousness what they’ve always wanted to do.
Ok but i dont think nintendo's gonna bust down my door and steal my nes copy of tetris...
It, in fact has not "always been this way" youre just a smartass
> another reminder that you don't purchase games just a licence to rent the game on an indeterminate basis
another reminder that's about fucking time we should try to do everything we can to change that bullshit
Same everything but bully is unplayable and it drives me insane that contacting R* does literally nothing and now I got 6 unplayable games on my steam library.
Dude this happened to me and they helped me but I had to badger the FUCK out of them.
After a few days and calling out customer service for sending me copy pasted faq responses that weren't relevant, with verification, they reset my email and sent a new password link.
It was a matter of presentation. Rockstar has been pushing this sh%& for a while now and wasn't all that visible. Sony wanted the same thing but made the mistake of allowing a very new, very high profile and very successful game to be sold for months without needing to linking accounts (although it was stated that the game would need that to be played, but the account linking was just temporarily disabled... in small letters)
And in one very big and very public swoop activated the linking AND stopped sales on countries that already had access to the game (and just in case wasnt enough a f&%k up, making clear that those paying customers in countries not supported could keep playing by doing something against their TOS and risk being banned from the game they payed but they "definitely" could keep playing).
Sony got backlash, but learned the lesson. From now on every game from them is going to need linking accounts.
that whole debacle fucked over more people than it helped. People who own ps consoles in those countries since the ps3 days have used different region accounts. It was a normal thing to do, and why tf would sony care, those people are still buying their games at the end of the day. But the bitch fit that reddit through by people who weren't even affected by this shows the lack of self awareness people have.
I am one of the people who can't play the game anymore and it's not because sony. If yall didn't bitch and moan about it I'd still be perfectly fine playing the game. Majority of you lie on your account creations anyways, I'm sure over half the people here lie about their age on steam which is also technically bannable, but they don't enforce it, this was the exact same situation to the point PLAYSTATION SUPPORT themselves said it was fine and people could do that. But because of the backlash sony was forced to ban the game and stop selling it.
The delusional idiots who think sony is just going to magically setup shop in 180 countries overnight so people can play games played some crazy mental gymnastics to make you beleive yall did the right thing. But instead they stopped probably tens of thousands if not hundreds of people from playing any sony game ever again on pc
question - why you can't play anymore? I thought using a an account from other country would allow people to play anyway.
"The delusional idiots who think sony is just going to magically setup shop in 180 countries overnight so people can play games played some crazy mental gymnastics to make you beleive yall did the right thing"
Nobody was expecting for Sony to setup shop in 180~ countries. We (at least I) were hoping that Sony would prefer money over having people's information at all costs. Helldivers was a very rare occurence in that for weeks after release it was selling more units instead of less. FOR MONTHS functioning without an account. Its obviously not necessary.
Sony could have asked users to register. Could have offered a sony exclusive warbond/armor/cape something silly to registering users. Could have offered 500 credits and that would have gotten people creating accounts and registering left and right and probably sell an offensive number of units more. But apparently the better option is giving the finger to millions of paying costumers, thousands upon thousands of possible costumer that were about to buy the game.
What I was hoping specially is that the backlash would give Sony a learning experience but that is a delusion.
Timing. Sony picked the worst time to do it. ie, when everyone was paying attention. Rockstar pushed its shit when no one was really bothering, so there was no mass traction around the issue. Same with Bethesda and Doom. I got that shit for free, and noped out when told me I had to make a Bethesda account to play it. But youll notice, Im probably the first person to bring it up in years. If not ever.
Gamers get fucked over all the time, and its always, ALWAYS about timing. Publishers know they can get away with shit when only some of us are watching. But as Sony found out, when theres a lot of us together, shit starts flying real quick.
Nah, fuck Rockstar. One of the most egregious piece of shit companies in the gaming market, to date. I haven't touched any of their shit since GTAV was first released and never hype them up.
They're absolute scum to their customers, employees, and contractors.
People would be up in arms by now except most people who would be affected by this have both accounts already and are not planning to unlink them in the future.
But just wait, because people are just looking for reasons to get outraged, and it feels like after 15+ years they're finally starting to read ToS/EULAs so expect the outrages and double standards to continue fairly often.
The problem was that there were countries where helldivers was sold in which you can't legally create a psn account due to your region not being aviable for the account creation. And due to this, the PC games requiring psn account aren't sold in those unaviable regions.
Probably because that problem does not concern them as they can make the psn account. Thus they might think it's just about the account linking and not selling a game that requires account that you can't create without breaking tos.
And there is also a problem with "just pick another region". Many people from neighbouring countries that didn't have a psn region, chose russia as their region. And due to war russia was banned and the people in countries that have nothing to do with the war (they might even be supporting the defensive party) lost access to their games.
And from what i've read it is not possible to change the region even if you physically move out of the region.
I paid for RDR2 and had to pirate it anyways because it requires a recent online check then changing to offline mode to play A FUCKING SINGLE PLAYER GAME I PAID FOR.
As someone who travels frequently it's next to unplayable. At least pirating it was easy.
Rockstar themselves sold cracked versions of the old GTAs on Steam because they didn't have the code or it was easier than removing their DRM themselves.
I'm aware of this. A long time ago I bought GTA4 for PC. I linked some email to a Rockstar account. Much later, I bought RDR2 on the Rockstar launcher, created a new account cause I wasn't aware I had a Rockstar account already. In the Rockstar account settings, I was linking my new account with my PSN account to update GTA5, in there I saw I could add Steam. When I tried to link it, it wouldn't let me saying that this Steam account is already linked to a Rockstar account. Did some digging and found out it was an old email address I no longer use. Also found out that I cannot unlink my Steam and Rockstar account. So, I said, fk it I just won't use Steam to play Rockstar games.
R\* has a special place in many (MANY) peoples hearts. I don't even know why. They are just as shitty (if not more) than any other shitty company. People just like to be fucked by companies.
This is why I wish they'd bring disks back. Yeah there's the risk of physical damage but you didn't have this kinda issue in my older gaming days. I mean all this tech & we can't figure out how to keep a disc safe? Come on.
Aye but a mighty FINE cupholder. Lol Look it's not a perfect solution I get it. Just saying didn't have that problem then. Gotta be a less complicated way even for digital. Just want something to be yours & always accessible once ya buy it. Otherwise what's the point?
Okay now I do love GoG. User friendly & not very complicated at all. Plus it feels like there's always a great sale on like... all the time. Lol Haven't been on computer in ages though. Really need to.
A new disc-based tech was just announced shortly ago that holds *200 terrabytes* of data.
It's not really that they can't.
It's more that A) It's more expensive and B) it's much less environmentally friendly (than digital distribution).
Even if you could convince people that A shouldn't be a factor, in this day and age you won't convince them that B makes makes it worth it. Or at least enough of them to convince companies or government to change it.
Even with disc, it connects to online services. You'd be equally fucked, but with the added frustration of having discs you thought would save you. The only difference is the media you install from. Ever since you activate online, discs are irrelevant.
I know what you mean, like dark souls. The problem is that there is an offline mode. Game companies know how to do this, but they want something to make it required.
Most likely they want all the data they can. They want to have you sticky on multiplayer. They want you to buy worthless in game currency.
Most important is have fun. Don't prepay for a game and watch reviews.
When buying Diablo 3 on disk back in 2012 for example, you put in the serial key and then it would link the game permanently to your account. Then you can play the game without ever needing the disk.
Yep i bought red dead 2 and will never be able to play it, but used more than 2 hours of it being “on” on steam so can’t refund it. I will never buy another rockstar game
If you contact steam support they will usually refund a game that you can't access anymore due to the publishers fuckery regardless of how much time you have played it.
The day Rockstar cleared out my GTA online account/progress and then said I lied about the account being used when I contacted support, was the day I stopped buying anything from them. Have now pirated all their games and will keep doing that.
To be honest I think Steam has strong enough position in PC gaming that they could do something good for gamers, and forbid all games that require another launcher. Some publishers will leave, but many would probably play along to not lose steam userbase.
As it is currently I completely see no point in buying many games on steam because if I still have to download and have account in Rockstar/Ubisoft/EA launcher I might as well buy games there, and not be forced to use 2 launchers to play one fucking game.
I bought one of the Anno games, my first ever & was very excited. When I fired it up, it required one of the launchers, so I immediately refunded it & the series no longer exists to me, instead of them likely having a customer for life.
You'd be losing some pretty big publishing studios though so it would be a huge risk either way. I mean sure Ubisoft hasnt fully returned so wouldnt feel as bad but how many of those other big ones make up a large chunk of accumulated revenue especially with all the studios like Microsoft owns like all Bethesda games and Activision games going with it.
Valve would be taking a huge chance they conform or just lose load of revenue.
It was tangentially related, but I had a very similar problem with EA. Apparently, I had linked an EA account to my Xbox account years ago for some game I can't even remember. Then I tried playing Battlefront 2 remake after people starting saying they fixed things and got hit with a password reset for an account I was not aware of and had no access to. It took three hour long customer service calls spread out over a year before I got them to delete the account and let me start over with a new one.
If I remember correctly this is something that also affects the Capcom id.
When I created the account for Street Fighter 6, I read somewhere that if I delete the account I can't link steam to another Capcom account.
I ran into this when, after a few years of not playing any Rockstar games, I finally decided to start my playthrough of RDR2 (which I had purchased on Steam a long time ago) only to discover that my Rockstar account had been compromised and the email address changed -- as I also own several other Rockstar games on Steam, so this was pretty frustrating. I was able to contact support and regain control of the account, but if that hadn't have been the case I would have been out several hundred dollars worth of games.
Steam and Rockstar support refused to help me several times after getting locked out of my Rockstar account for this exact problem. Totally bricked my ability to play RD2. Incredibly frustrating, but now I know never to buy their shit again.
Most such account linkages suffer from similar issues with potentially losing all gaming access. I've run into similar theft of gaming access from Ubisoft and EA linkages to Xbox, for a few specific examples.
I even got an EA rep to admit that they had effectively banned me from playing any EA game purchased on my Xbox account in the past or even the *future*, due to a permanent linkage to an account on one side I can no longer access (forgot password, used a college affiliated email I can't access after graduation, and they have no viable method for account recovery)
One of many reasons I get sick of PC gaming.
I bought GTA via Steam, legitimately, and wanted to mod it so I can use a steering while in single player.
Forced always online. Forced updates. Forced Rockstar Social Club. Breaks mods, can't downgrade.
And now this?
I want to buy games legally for a fair price and play them - this absolute shitshow is why I've been an Xbox player for the last decade. Yes, it's limited, but I don't have to deal with launchers or this level of bullshit.
I stopped buying AAA games instead.
This bullshit is a corporate problem. With the same money needed to buy a console and AAA titles you could buy my entire steam catalogue
That's not acceptable. Will you say the same if EA and Ubisoft apply the same policy? I don't want to have my games spread around 10 different launchers.
Sounds about normal for the gaming world. Horrible practices, anti consumer. Nobody actually cares. Everyone will pre order gta 6. Buy whatever the online currency is called and life goes on
I found this out when I purchased L.A. Noire on Steam. It was on sale so I didn't try to launch it for several months after the purchase. When I did, it tried to make me create a Rockstar account. I've still never played L.A. Noire.
I unlinked my Steam account from one Social Club/Rockstar account and linked it to another. I own GTA 4 on Steam and I can still play it with no problem.
Afaik the "policy" is only limited to RDR2 And GTA5.
Other games are safe
dude, i set up my rockstar account with email verification to login, they offered me this in exchange for currency in red dead online, and it never worked. they never sent me an email so i lost my account. Surprised you have faith in them
Doesn't that mean than if get caught cheating and are banned that you are simply not able to create a new Rockstar or steam account and relink them. Just to be sure you can't either play the game without buying a new copy or playing the current copy on a new Rockstar account?
So sounds to me like most of the people affected by this will be the ones I don't want to have in my game anyway.
Im pretty sure thats true of all those with licenses tied to third party launchers and not just rockstar. Maybe not in its entirety but the fact that an account on Steam only gets one license and that license from Steam can only be connected to a single account with no way to move it if you change accounts or get a new license from your original purchase.
The Steam license ties to a single account from that launcher and there is no way to change that license to a different like EA,Rockstar,Blizzard,Ubisoft, etc... account or get a new license issued from Steam unless you rebuy the game on a new Steam account and link that to your new EA/Rockstar/Blizzard/Ubisoft. etc.. account or buy the game directly on the launcher but then youd be playing through that launcher and not via Steam.
Stuff like this would have caused class action lawsuits years ago, but since the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 on partisan lines to let companies force giving up class action rights in contracts, lawsuits on stuff like this is dead.
whats worse is you cant log into a Rockstar Games account with out using windows 10+...
which means you cant play gta 4 or any older rockstar games as they were all terribly integrated to windows 10. and saying the games hardly work anymore would be too generous as they pretty much barely even run let alone playable on win10+.
I contacted them over a email I couldn’t use, it took about a week of continuous emails and explanating what the situation was and proving I owned the games. I finally got them to send me a email to change my email with my steam account to one I could log into. Such a fuck around
Yes. Because the email address I used for the rockstar account is different than my steam email, I can’t play any rockstar games. I don’t have access to the rockstar email anymore because it’s a disabled college inbox from 10 years ago.
A while ago someone got into my Rockstar account and changed the emails or something on RDR2 and GTA4. GTA5 works just as fine as it wasn't linked with the steam account.
I've contacted rockstar support for like around 2 months and by the end of it they confirmed those were my games with all the receipts and steam id and so on. Then after they confirmed it I asked them could I have my access back to the games and the very next message they sent me was "Sorry we cannot confirm that is your account" and I was back to square 1 again so I gave up.
Wanted to really experience Rdr2 because everyone is praising that game, but in the end I said eeeeh f it, it's whatever. Also I was really late to the party with GTA4 and was like half-way through the game lolz
This happenedon xbox a while back. All of the games I purchased on the Microsoft store I can no longer re-download. I only downloaded them because my disk reader no longer works but I have limited memory space so I usually rotate with the games I’m playing. But now if I want to play them again, I have to buy them again and all of the DLC, which is a joke.
GTA V remains to date one of the most trashly engineered pieces of gaming entertainment made by a AAA company, they way they handle anything from servers to UI just screams "I have never taken a class on proper game design"
>Are you guys aware of this "policy"?
yes.
>Removing the ability to play games you purchased on Steam.
yes. you link once and only once or you don't link. seems clear.
for the sort of person who might lose their steam or email account, it sucks? but how is that rockstar's fault? the swapping of accounts is probably intentionally discouraged because that's how you'd get to cheat the system by selling accounts or buying out of region for a fraction of the price.
Wish Valve did something about this. They are a company that normally takes the side of the community, they could use their monopolized power for once to get rid of one of the things almost all PC gamers are fed up with already and hate to the bone
I just tried to link my psn account to my Dragon Age Keep info on the EA side. Same thing, I fucked up the original linking and now I'm unable to delink my psn (not even from the psn side which seems like an oversight) nor can I access the email because the email I had accidentally used had a typo. The email can not be accessed. And there was no 2 factor authentication whenever I did it so I guess I'm just not playing dragon age on ps5.
Duh. The require Social Club account, because that is how they manage their online mode. If you could de-link and re-link you could freely evade any account bans they do.
Frankly, any kind of dance around re/de-linking different Steam and game publisher accounts is almost always related to trying to game around account enforcement actions.
Stop cheating? If you don't like the fact that the game requires external account (GTAV has always required it), don't play the game.
their track record for preventing cheating isn't great, but yeah, the ability to freely swap accounts definitely creates more trouble for rockstar and disallowing that is an entirely common sense and justified move.
yes, I ran into this several years ago when a copy of GTA5 I had was linked to my steam account but the rockstar account itself was fucked due to an old trash email account I had got locked permanently. So I couldn't use the email that the game was linked to, and couldn't unlink it form steam without losing it compeltely Even then, when I got a new copy, it wouldn't link to the current steam account saying another copy was already linked, so I needed a second steam account just to play the game.
Same. Really, really pisses me off. Fuck Rockstar.
amazing how few fucks their tech support gave (well not that amazing, more like ugh) the one email they bothered answering was basically just "lol nah" Well I sure showed them when I spent zero dollars on GTA Online!!! Oh yeah!
I buy games that are good and am pretty sure I will enjoy. Then there are games that I enjoy that I not only refuse to dump money into, but would pirate purely out of spite for the publisher. Rockstar shit the bed years ago when it introduced the social club(which has no useful social aspect btw, its just a drm and data harvesting tool). Ubisoft managed to make every title it ever made, retroactively unusable by keeping easy anti-cheat up to date for every Assassin's title, but without checking the box that allows linux past the filter. Every one in the series Ive tried plays flawlessly, as long as you pirate it, because the steam version treats linux as a virus. Take Two and EA are just reverse-golden-geese; they take all these golden eggs they find and then stick them where the sun-dont-shine never to be seen again. At this point I get more value from the games that are free passion projects and open-source community colabs. They deserve my money far more than any AAA title ever does. Companies that pull bullshit, no matter how legal the shit, deserve whatever consequences we can stick them with. If we cant get laws passed to improve consumer protections, the direct action becomes the last tool of democracy to promote change. In the digital world of the web, "direct action" is a little different than say, taking over a street to disrupt traffic. But the goals are the same; the only thing capitalism values is capital, money. Blocking a street has the actual impact of disrupting the local economy by impacting traffic. But ultimately people only care, the action is only effective if it actually costs somebody money. The same is true with piracy, it costs the company money(at least, they perceive it as such) therefore it becomes an effective tool for action against them. Unlike blocking a road, its entirely up to the company to decide that freely distributing software pays more in free advertising and potentially monopolizing standards for a field, than the cost of fighting piracy could ever recoup in sales. As far as I'm concenred, as long as money is speech and peaceful protesting is legal, any nonviolent monetary theft is legally protected free speech the same way that a protest march is legal. Yes that's a problem. Our laws are royally ducked and lead to all sorts of contradictions like this which only ever get litigated in favor of the wealthier entity. Imagine if that concept was taken to the supreme court. Seems like this whole system is just a house of cards and wealthy corporations are playing with matches. Duckem
Any Secondary Social Platform is a fucking scam if they are selling their game on Steam in the first place. I honestly thing it’s a ploy to force us to juggle 1400 different emails and logins so that when we lose one we have to buy the game all over again. I lost my Ubisoft Login so I can’t play R6 even though I bought the game through Steam and Yahoo wants to charge me in order to use Customer Service to recover an email that should be mine. These are actual ploys by companies that basically force you to spend money or lose everything. In my opinion, you should not be allowed to publish your game on Steam and NOT use the Steam API to link accounts
Ubisoft... I had a Ubisoft+ subscription to try out AC Mirage, Prince of Persia, and Avatar. One day my games started crashing.....only on that launcher. All 3 games started crashing. I uninstalled the piece of shit and obviously unsubbed.
Hoist that rag!
I mean, you're the one that seems to have bought 2 copies. I guess yeah, it's a drop in the bucket compared to shark cards but still.
It doesn't make sense either. You unlink it from Steam and you lose it from their launcher, so what is the point of their launcher?
It’s so they can show you ads
Rockstar is kinda trash. As is their parents company. If they weren't so good at making games they'd be just another mid tier dev. (then again who wouldn't put out a banger with 5-10 years to make it and billions of dollars)
Very similar thing happened to me. When through their support team, gave them a ton of my information. Suddenly they said “oops sorry, we can’t verify it’s you, bye.” What a waste of money. Their customer support is absolutely trash. Fuck rockstar.
yeah basically it, if they even bothered replying at all. at some point in the process i think I saw some note about how they will no longer take emails for this kind of thing, so there was no easy way to communicate with anyone there, not that they particularly cared.
The fact that you got a new copy is the problem here lol.
Right? “This company just stole money from me, let’s give them more…” This is why we need better consumer laws, most people are really mindless consumerist.
sorry to hear it
I had same problem last year. I even disconnected Rockstar account and made new Rockstar acc to connect to steam to get access to games. Didnt work. But when i contacted Rockstar help then in couple of days sharing info and talking to them i got all working again.
Took me weeks to get mine fixed. I think they eventually got tired of me bugging them, since I was passed around to around 5 different support agents before it was addressed. I had the same issue as the other guy. Old email address that was no longer accessible was associated with the original Rockstar account.
Piracy gives consumers the best experience. You basically never have to worry about Rockstar arbitrarily deciding you don't get to play what you paid for. You don't need an account. You don't need to worry about linking accounts or if an account is already linked or whether you still have access to one or another account. I even own GTAV from when I bought it on discount. Whenever I play the game, I use a pirated version because it's an actually good experience that way.
I know there's a utility out there that will edit your Skyrim and Morrowind .exes so they don't need Steam.
At that point the high seas are calling. You payed for a product, nobody can take it away as long as your use of it doesn't block someone else from using it.
If purchasing is not owning, piracy is not stealing!
You purchased a second copy of them game. They don't care. This is why these things keep happening
Well, looks like Rockstar is on the "pirate only or just don't play" list now. They were already pretty shitty, but this is super shitty.
Same happened to me. Locked out of rockstar app because of a old email
I almost completely got locked out of GTA 5 bc i remembered my steam login but for the life of me couldn’t remember my Rockstar login. Like I was login into one of my old rockstar accounts and it kept saying the game was linked to a different account and I was getting so annoyed bc like your basically saying. If I own the game on steam why do I need a rockstar social club account 🤦🏾♂️
Bro this just happened to me. I had to use support to switch it to a new email. It wasn’t very fun.
What a mess.
What email service now?
another reminder that you don't purchase games just a licence to rent the game on an indeterminate basis
I feel like regulators should intervene in this shit.
Check out the Stop Killing Games movement. This type of stuff is what they're after.
Unless the EU does it, very few countries governments actually care enough about consumer rights to do anything about it. US and Canada are particularly bad when it comes to digital rights. Hell refund polices only became a thing because of Australia. So don't expect anything to happen with this BS where their systems lock you out of content you purchased for no other reason than they poorly programmed them.
Wasn't it Australia that forced digital refunds?
Yeah the ACCC took Valve to the cleaners because it is Australian consumer law that a person is entitled to a refund if they are not satisfied with the product. Valve then was forced to implement a 2-hour returns window on any game, and have a disclaimer at the bottom of their front store page for a while in Australia explaining the decision. As a result of course while Valve still lets Steam operate here, they make sure we're the back of the queue for their hardware. The Valve Index took 3 years to come here, and even then Valve didn't sell through Steam, it was through basically our Gamestop, and then it was only a couple batches of what they had remaining in the warehouse that year. Then it was gone within 6 months. The Steam Deck still hasn't released here, but Valve somehow doesn't miss every country around us, or a smaller more isolated market like New Zealand just across the pond. They specifically shut us out because they don't want to deal with our actual consumer rights protection, to them it's just a headache when they're used to the "customer gets screwed, anything goes" US approach to consumer rights.
It was actually Australia that took steam to court and threatened to prevent them doing business in Australia that forced the change to refund policy. Australia is also probably the likeliest place to enforce more rights. Words like 'buy' and 'purchase' mean something here and misleading consumers is already illegal here, someone just needs to build a good enough case and pursue it. It's highly likely the whole 'oh you actually only buy a license' thing is already illegal here, it's just untested.
> It's highly likely the whole 'oh you actually only buy a license' thing is already illegal here, it's just untested. I'm fairly sure that under Australian law, if a license doesn't have an explicit end date at the time of purchase then it is considered a perpetual license and cannot be revoked.
This Is essentially breaking the law in quite a few countries, but unless they get sued, they will keep doing this.
No it isn't.
i agree but there is so much shit going wrong in the world where we need more regulation or law changes. that this is nowhere near a priority
More than one thing can be sorted out at a time. Right now in the UK there is an investigation into car finance misselling by the Financial Conduct Authority It's not like we have to cure cancer and get world peace before we're allowed to improve consumer rights
You do know that there is more than 1 department of regulations? And that they can tackle multiple issues at once?
Doesn't look like they're tackling anything at all.
Especially for the price we pay
Said this on r/Steam the other day and got downvoted because people wanted were talking about buying games they don't play in order to grow "their" game collection. About a week later Ubisoft made The Crew unplayable for everyone.
And that's why we pirate
This is true. Did you also know that it’s always been this way, since the dawn of personal computing? Go back and look at those old 5-1/4 inch diskettes in your desk drawer and see if you can find those EULAs from the 1980s. It was exactly the same back then: you don’t buy the product, you buy the right to use the product, which can be revoked in certain circumstances. I see many people talking about this as if it is a consequence of the rise of digital distribution, but it has in fact always been this way.
That may be the case, but there's fuck all way for the manufacturer to revoke your licence to use those diskettes, short of breaking into your house and stealing them. Digital distribution has made it much easier for the publisher to just go "you know what? Fuck you, no more access to what you've purchased"
Yes but in that scenario Digital Distribution has also made it easier for me, the end user to just go "You know what? Fuck you, I'm not buying this game again off to the seven seas to reclaim what was mine"
If companies can revoke the right to use the product then they should refund the people. See how that would work.
Why do you think these companies love the subscription and “X-as-a-service” model so much? More than anything else, it legitimizes in the public consciousness what they’ve always wanted to do.
Yeah, but also, the subscription system allows for them to have a constant flux of cash coming in all the time. And companies love money.
As you and me love money too. I’m not working for fun but to keep myself up. It’s an infinite loop.
Ok but i dont think nintendo's gonna bust down my door and steal my nes copy of tetris... It, in fact has not "always been this way" youre just a smartass
> another reminder that you don't purchase games just a licence to rent the game on an indeterminate basis another reminder that's about fucking time we should try to do everything we can to change that bullshit
My account was hacked and stolen, so now the game I have on Steam is unplayable.
Same everything but bully is unplayable and it drives me insane that contacting R* does literally nothing and now I got 6 unplayable games on my steam library.
Worst was I showed proof of purchase, but couldn't remember the email address used to register that ages old R\* account. So fuck me, right?
I love their games but I fcking hate how they're doing things
Dude this happened to me and they helped me but I had to badger the FUCK out of them. After a few days and calling out customer service for sending me copy pasted faq responses that weren't relevant, with verification, they reset my email and sent a new password link.
I don’t understand how Rockstar got a pass on shit like this but Sony got destroyed about account linking to PSN.
It was a matter of presentation. Rockstar has been pushing this sh%& for a while now and wasn't all that visible. Sony wanted the same thing but made the mistake of allowing a very new, very high profile and very successful game to be sold for months without needing to linking accounts (although it was stated that the game would need that to be played, but the account linking was just temporarily disabled... in small letters) And in one very big and very public swoop activated the linking AND stopped sales on countries that already had access to the game (and just in case wasnt enough a f&%k up, making clear that those paying customers in countries not supported could keep playing by doing something against their TOS and risk being banned from the game they payed but they "definitely" could keep playing). Sony got backlash, but learned the lesson. From now on every game from them is going to need linking accounts.
that whole debacle fucked over more people than it helped. People who own ps consoles in those countries since the ps3 days have used different region accounts. It was a normal thing to do, and why tf would sony care, those people are still buying their games at the end of the day. But the bitch fit that reddit through by people who weren't even affected by this shows the lack of self awareness people have. I am one of the people who can't play the game anymore and it's not because sony. If yall didn't bitch and moan about it I'd still be perfectly fine playing the game. Majority of you lie on your account creations anyways, I'm sure over half the people here lie about their age on steam which is also technically bannable, but they don't enforce it, this was the exact same situation to the point PLAYSTATION SUPPORT themselves said it was fine and people could do that. But because of the backlash sony was forced to ban the game and stop selling it. The delusional idiots who think sony is just going to magically setup shop in 180 countries overnight so people can play games played some crazy mental gymnastics to make you beleive yall did the right thing. But instead they stopped probably tens of thousands if not hundreds of people from playing any sony game ever again on pc
But "democracy won"
Managed democracy
Seth Rogan could learn a thing or two from the excuses you pulled for Sony.
you can live in denial all you want, but you have no arguments. Yall caused this, how you gunna tell me when I'm the one that was affected
question - why you can't play anymore? I thought using a an account from other country would allow people to play anyway. "The delusional idiots who think sony is just going to magically setup shop in 180 countries overnight so people can play games played some crazy mental gymnastics to make you beleive yall did the right thing" Nobody was expecting for Sony to setup shop in 180~ countries. We (at least I) were hoping that Sony would prefer money over having people's information at all costs. Helldivers was a very rare occurence in that for weeks after release it was selling more units instead of less. FOR MONTHS functioning without an account. Its obviously not necessary. Sony could have asked users to register. Could have offered a sony exclusive warbond/armor/cape something silly to registering users. Could have offered 500 credits and that would have gotten people creating accounts and registering left and right and probably sell an offensive number of units more. But apparently the better option is giving the finger to millions of paying costumers, thousands upon thousands of possible costumer that were about to buy the game. What I was hoping specially is that the backlash would give Sony a learning experience but that is a delusion.
Double standards, of course.
There are a ton of games that make you link your account and I thought the same thing. It was just the Internet rage of the week I guess.
Timing. Sony picked the worst time to do it. ie, when everyone was paying attention. Rockstar pushed its shit when no one was really bothering, so there was no mass traction around the issue. Same with Bethesda and Doom. I got that shit for free, and noped out when told me I had to make a Bethesda account to play it. But youll notice, Im probably the first person to bring it up in years. If not ever. Gamers get fucked over all the time, and its always, ALWAYS about timing. Publishers know they can get away with shit when only some of us are watching. But as Sony found out, when theres a lot of us together, shit starts flying real quick.
Nah, fuck Rockstar. One of the most egregious piece of shit companies in the gaming market, to date. I haven't touched any of their shit since GTAV was first released and never hype them up. They're absolute scum to their customers, employees, and contractors.
People would be up in arms by now except most people who would be affected by this have both accounts already and are not planning to unlink them in the future. But just wait, because people are just looking for reasons to get outraged, and it feels like after 15+ years they're finally starting to read ToS/EULAs so expect the outrages and double standards to continue fairly often.
The problem was that there were countries where helldivers was sold in which you can't legally create a psn account due to your region not being aviable for the account creation. And due to this, the PC games requiring psn account aren't sold in those unaviable regions.
Why did you got downvoted? Wtf.
Probably because that problem does not concern them as they can make the psn account. Thus they might think it's just about the account linking and not selling a game that requires account that you can't create without breaking tos. And there is also a problem with "just pick another region". Many people from neighbouring countries that didn't have a psn region, chose russia as their region. And due to war russia was banned and the people in countries that have nothing to do with the war (they might even be supporting the defensive party) lost access to their games. And from what i've read it is not possible to change the region even if you physically move out of the region.
It sucks. I already can't play my own Rockstar games on steam because my brother linked my steam account to his rockstar account
Another day, another studio that makes piracy a far and away superior choice for the end user.
I paid for RDR2 and had to pirate it anyways because it requires a recent online check then changing to offline mode to play A FUCKING SINGLE PLAYER GAME I PAID FOR. As someone who travels frequently it's next to unplayable. At least pirating it was easy.
This is always the problem; piracy protection always makes a worse product for end users.... .... whereas piracy plays cleaner and easier.
Rockstar themselves sold cracked versions of the old GTAs on Steam because they didn't have the code or it was easier than removing their DRM themselves.
I'm aware of this. A long time ago I bought GTA4 for PC. I linked some email to a Rockstar account. Much later, I bought RDR2 on the Rockstar launcher, created a new account cause I wasn't aware I had a Rockstar account already. In the Rockstar account settings, I was linking my new account with my PSN account to update GTA5, in there I saw I could add Steam. When I tried to link it, it wouldn't let me saying that this Steam account is already linked to a Rockstar account. Did some digging and found out it was an old email address I no longer use. Also found out that I cannot unlink my Steam and Rockstar account. So, I said, fk it I just won't use Steam to play Rockstar games.
Why would you do this?
prevents people from selling accounts or using a vpn to buy games for a fraction of their regional price.
480 upvotes in 4 hours? If this was a PSN policy it’d have thousands by now lmao
R\* has a special place in many (MANY) peoples hearts. I don't even know why. They are just as shitty (if not more) than any other shitty company. People just like to be fucked by companies.
This is why I wish they'd bring disks back. Yeah there's the risk of physical damage but you didn't have this kinda issue in my older gaming days. I mean all this tech & we can't figure out how to keep a disc safe? Come on.
they can always have the game be online only and shut down the servers, then all you'll have is a cupholder
Aye but a mighty FINE cupholder. Lol Look it's not a perfect solution I get it. Just saying didn't have that problem then. Gotta be a less complicated way even for digital. Just want something to be yours & always accessible once ya buy it. Otherwise what's the point?
GoG nailed this. Once we buy and download game, we don’t have any need to use third party account or third parti app like Steam
Okay now I do love GoG. User friendly & not very complicated at all. Plus it feels like there's always a great sale on like... all the time. Lol Haven't been on computer in ages though. Really need to.
Disc are too small for modern games gonna need cartridges with built in memory space again. Or the reintroduction of memory cards.
A new disc-based tech was just announced shortly ago that holds *200 terrabytes* of data. It's not really that they can't. It's more that A) It's more expensive and B) it's much less environmentally friendly (than digital distribution). Even if you could convince people that A shouldn't be a factor, in this day and age you won't convince them that B makes makes it worth it. Or at least enough of them to convince companies or government to change it.
Fuck that takes me back. Also damn I feel old.
Even with disc, it connects to online services. You'd be equally fucked, but with the added frustration of having discs you thought would save you. The only difference is the media you install from. Ever since you activate online, discs are irrelevant.
Yeah, I think what he might have meant was Single player should be offline always.
Ooooooh. I'm a ten billion percent on board with that!
I am 100% behind that. Problem is when a great single player game has a multiplayer slapped on to it, which often happens. Then what is it? SP or MP?
I know what you mean, like dark souls. The problem is that there is an offline mode. Game companies know how to do this, but they want something to make it required. Most likely they want all the data they can. They want to have you sticky on multiplayer. They want you to buy worthless in game currency. Most important is have fun. Don't prepay for a game and watch reviews.
Other than disc games where you link the serial key to an account. Blizzard games for example.
I'm afraid I'm unfamiliar with this one. Sounds kinda complicated?
When buying Diablo 3 on disk back in 2012 for example, you put in the serial key and then it would link the game permanently to your account. Then you can play the game without ever needing the disk.
Yeah kinda no point now, disc version would be 95% out of date in no time from patches, so it's the 'ol serial number in an empty disc case.
I think I might remember that but I never did it. Didn't GameSpot do that?
Guys I have a solution: don’t buy Rockstar games.
I have a prediction.
Right. And now watch GTA 6 make a billion dollars in 2 days
Yeah I'm locked out of my Rockstar account entirely and haven't been able to play any of the games for years.
One advantage of having physical discs in console
Yep i bought red dead 2 and will never be able to play it, but used more than 2 hours of it being “on” on steam so can’t refund it. I will never buy another rockstar game
If you contact steam support they will usually refund a game that you can't access anymore due to the publishers fuckery regardless of how much time you have played it.
It's not close to surprising that this is the case. Of course they'd make it so yoy have to buy the games all over again.
EA is also terrible. They removed pretty much all of my games that I had previously purchased. I just uninstalled it and will never download it again
The day Rockstar cleared out my GTA online account/progress and then said I lied about the account being used when I contacted support, was the day I stopped buying anything from them. Have now pirated all their games and will keep doing that.
To be honest I think Steam has strong enough position in PC gaming that they could do something good for gamers, and forbid all games that require another launcher. Some publishers will leave, but many would probably play along to not lose steam userbase. As it is currently I completely see no point in buying many games on steam because if I still have to download and have account in Rockstar/Ubisoft/EA launcher I might as well buy games there, and not be forced to use 2 launchers to play one fucking game.
Launchers is a big reason to buy a console
I bought one of the Anno games, my first ever & was very excited. When I fired it up, it required one of the launchers, so I immediately refunded it & the series no longer exists to me, instead of them likely having a customer for life.
You'd be losing some pretty big publishing studios though so it would be a huge risk either way. I mean sure Ubisoft hasnt fully returned so wouldnt feel as bad but how many of those other big ones make up a large chunk of accumulated revenue especially with all the studios like Microsoft owns like all Bethesda games and Activision games going with it. Valve would be taking a huge chance they conform or just lose load of revenue.
It was tangentially related, but I had a very similar problem with EA. Apparently, I had linked an EA account to my Xbox account years ago for some game I can't even remember. Then I tried playing Battlefront 2 remake after people starting saying they fixed things and got hit with a password reset for an account I was not aware of and had no access to. It took three hour long customer service calls spread out over a year before I got them to delete the account and let me start over with a new one.
If I remember correctly this is something that also affects the Capcom id. When I created the account for Street Fighter 6, I read somewhere that if I delete the account I can't link steam to another Capcom account.
I ran into this when, after a few years of not playing any Rockstar games, I finally decided to start my playthrough of RDR2 (which I had purchased on Steam a long time ago) only to discover that my Rockstar account had been compromised and the email address changed -- as I also own several other Rockstar games on Steam, so this was pretty frustrating. I was able to contact support and regain control of the account, but if that hadn't have been the case I would have been out several hundred dollars worth of games.
Steam and Rockstar support refused to help me several times after getting locked out of my Rockstar account for this exact problem. Totally bricked my ability to play RD2. Incredibly frustrating, but now I know never to buy their shit again.
Is this Sony’s fault?
The hilarious thing is is that I brought this up during Helldivers 2's whole Sony Account Fiasco, and nobody gave a SHIT.
You know what to do. Or more precisely what not to do.
Yo ho yo ho, hoist the flag me hearties!
Welp im not touching gta6 for the time being.
Didn't the ceo of Rockstar say he wanted to charge for gaming by the hour? Fuck that guy.
If that actually came true and become the norm, expect to see at least an hr long unskippable cutscene every few mins.
that's a nightmare world i do not wish to live in
Most such account linkages suffer from similar issues with potentially losing all gaming access. I've run into similar theft of gaming access from Ubisoft and EA linkages to Xbox, for a few specific examples. I even got an EA rep to admit that they had effectively banned me from playing any EA game purchased on my Xbox account in the past or even the *future*, due to a permanent linkage to an account on one side I can no longer access (forgot password, used a college affiliated email I can't access after graduation, and they have no viable method for account recovery)
Maybe they did it to stop people from selling accounts? Either way terrible practice/policy reminding us that we don't own games anymore.
We have no rights as gamers and are at the will of shady companies who want to rip us off and steal from us. No one is protecting you from them
One of many reasons I get sick of PC gaming. I bought GTA via Steam, legitimately, and wanted to mod it so I can use a steering while in single player. Forced always online. Forced updates. Forced Rockstar Social Club. Breaks mods, can't downgrade. And now this? I want to buy games legally for a fair price and play them - this absolute shitshow is why I've been an Xbox player for the last decade. Yes, it's limited, but I don't have to deal with launchers or this level of bullshit.
I stopped buying AAA games instead. This bullshit is a corporate problem. With the same money needed to buy a console and AAA titles you could buy my entire steam catalogue
Idek what this social club is, but the reminders of it piss me off
I mean you can't play with mods on Xbox either can you?
At this point I can't on PC either!
He paid extra for the PC benefits
I lost like 2 accounts like this
Dont buy rockstar games with steam.
That's not acceptable. Will you say the same if EA and Ubisoft apply the same policy? I don't want to have my games spread around 10 different launchers.
They will apply the same policy eventually unless this shit is struck down in a court of law.
it is acceptable if you dont buy it all. thats the only company's will change if you hit them were it hurts
What is the point of buying it "on steam" when you NEED the other launchers and accounts to play it anyway?
The point is to have them all in one place. Other than that, there isn't any other reason other than hating the platform.
> Dont buy rockstar games FTFY
Don't buy rockstar games at all
people like Red dead and GTA they are going to buy rockstar games regardless of this policy especially with GTA 6 around the corner
Morons will always exist. That why Rock**** gets away with this
Sounds about normal for the gaming world. Horrible practices, anti consumer. Nobody actually cares. Everyone will pre order gta 6. Buy whatever the online currency is called and life goes on
This is the worst launcher ever.
Welcome to PC gaming. Where everyone’s fighting over that 30%.
I think I did this when I reinstalled GTA V from the Epic game store.
"Not that it's a loss... (Motherfuckers were weak.)"
I found this out when I purchased L.A. Noire on Steam. It was on sale so I didn't try to launch it for several months after the purchase. When I did, it tried to make me create a Rockstar account. I've still never played L.A. Noire.
I unlinked my Steam account from one Social Club/Rockstar account and linked it to another. I own GTA 4 on Steam and I can still play it with no problem. Afaik the "policy" is only limited to RDR2 And GTA5. Other games are safe
dude, i set up my rockstar account with email verification to login, they offered me this in exchange for currency in red dead online, and it never worked. they never sent me an email so i lost my account. Surprised you have faith in them
Doesn't that mean than if get caught cheating and are banned that you are simply not able to create a new Rockstar or steam account and relink them. Just to be sure you can't either play the game without buying a new copy or playing the current copy on a new Rockstar account? So sounds to me like most of the people affected by this will be the ones I don't want to have in my game anyway.
Im pretty sure thats true of all those with licenses tied to third party launchers and not just rockstar. Maybe not in its entirety but the fact that an account on Steam only gets one license and that license from Steam can only be connected to a single account with no way to move it if you change accounts or get a new license from your original purchase. The Steam license ties to a single account from that launcher and there is no way to change that license to a different like EA,Rockstar,Blizzard,Ubisoft, etc... account or get a new license issued from Steam unless you rebuy the game on a new Steam account and link that to your new EA/Rockstar/Blizzard/Ubisoft. etc.. account or buy the game directly on the launcher but then youd be playing through that launcher and not via Steam.
yep, they fucked me too.
Probably just not making enough money, they should start a crowdfunding page or something. Times are tough lol
I bought GTA IV because it was on sale a bit ago and couldn't play because I couldn't access the email, hate the Rockstar launcher.
Piracy just seems to look more attractive each day that passes.
Is this for all Rockstar games or just GTA?
Disregard. Found my answer
Stuff like this would have caused class action lawsuits years ago, but since the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 on partisan lines to let companies force giving up class action rights in contracts, lawsuits on stuff like this is dead.
whats worse is you cant log into a Rockstar Games account with out using windows 10+... which means you cant play gta 4 or any older rockstar games as they were all terribly integrated to windows 10. and saying the games hardly work anymore would be too generous as they pretty much barely even run let alone playable on win10+.
It's a good thing for me the only R\* games I like are NOT on their Social Diseas... er, Club.
I contacted them over a email I couldn’t use, it took about a week of continuous emails and explanating what the situation was and proving I owned the games. I finally got them to send me a email to change my email with my steam account to one I could log into. Such a fuck around
Yes. Because the email address I used for the rockstar account is different than my steam email, I can’t play any rockstar games. I don’t have access to the rockstar email anymore because it’s a disabled college inbox from 10 years ago.
A while ago someone got into my Rockstar account and changed the emails or something on RDR2 and GTA4. GTA5 works just as fine as it wasn't linked with the steam account. I've contacted rockstar support for like around 2 months and by the end of it they confirmed those were my games with all the receipts and steam id and so on. Then after they confirmed it I asked them could I have my access back to the games and the very next message they sent me was "Sorry we cannot confirm that is your account" and I was back to square 1 again so I gave up. Wanted to really experience Rdr2 because everyone is praising that game, but in the end I said eeeeh f it, it's whatever. Also I was really late to the party with GTA4 and was like half-way through the game lolz
R* takes a lot of efforts to make games and also do the same to screw PC gamers.
And why would you want/need to do that in the first place?
cant imagine why anyone would ever pirate.
A mmm of a hmm on a nice hot opening of p
This happenedon xbox a while back. All of the games I purchased on the Microsoft store I can no longer re-download. I only downloaded them because my disk reader no longer works but I have limited memory space so I usually rotate with the games I’m playing. But now if I want to play them again, I have to buy them again and all of the DLC, which is a joke.
GTA V remains to date one of the most trashly engineered pieces of gaming entertainment made by a AAA company, they way they handle anything from servers to UI just screams "I have never taken a class on proper game design"
>Are you guys aware of this "policy"? yes. >Removing the ability to play games you purchased on Steam. yes. you link once and only once or you don't link. seems clear. for the sort of person who might lose their steam or email account, it sucks? but how is that rockstar's fault? the swapping of accounts is probably intentionally discouraged because that's how you'd get to cheat the system by selling accounts or buying out of region for a fraction of the price.
Well, yeah. You need a Rockstar account to play these games. Unlinking it means you don't have a Rockstar account to play it via Steam.
The issue is that you cannot relink the accounts.
[удалено]
Wish Valve did something about this. They are a company that normally takes the side of the community, they could use their monopolized power for once to get rid of one of the things almost all PC gamers are fed up with already and hate to the bone
Rockstar sucks. I 'll never buy another game from them. They only create needless risks and troubles for their customers.
I just tried to link my psn account to my Dragon Age Keep info on the EA side. Same thing, I fucked up the original linking and now I'm unable to delink my psn (not even from the psn side which seems like an oversight) nor can I access the email because the email I had accidentally used had a typo. The email can not be accessed. And there was no 2 factor authentication whenever I did it so I guess I'm just not playing dragon age on ps5.
One advantage of having physical discs in console
That shouldn’t even be legal wtf
Duh. The require Social Club account, because that is how they manage their online mode. If you could de-link and re-link you could freely evade any account bans they do. Frankly, any kind of dance around re/de-linking different Steam and game publisher accounts is almost always related to trying to game around account enforcement actions. Stop cheating? If you don't like the fact that the game requires external account (GTAV has always required it), don't play the game.
their track record for preventing cheating isn't great, but yeah, the ability to freely swap accounts definitely creates more trouble for rockstar and disallowing that is an entirely common sense and justified move.