Warum ist der Rockstar Games Launcher offline?

[Update: Nearly 29 hours after the outage was first announced, Rockstar tweeted Friday evening that the Rockstar Launcher was back online and most of the company's PC games were once again fully available. GTA: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition was excepted, though, and remains "unavailable to play or purchase as we remove files unintentionally included in these versions. We're sorry for the disruption and hope to have correct ones up soon," Rockstar writes]

Original Story

The servers for the Rockstar Games Launcher on PC have been down for nearly 24 hours now, and PC versions of Rockstar's games have been removed from sale on the company's website. The timing of the outage is particularly tough for the company, coming amid Thursday's launch of the remastered Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy.

Rockstar officially noted the outage in a support tweet Thursday afternoon, merely saying that "services for the Rockstar Games Launcher and supported titles are temporarily offline for maintenance. Services will return as soon as maintenance is completed." Fourteen hours later, the company gave a brief update, saying, "We thank you for your patience and understanding as we continue to work on restoring services for the Rockstar Games Launcher and supported titles." That same update also appears on Rockstar's support site.

PC Gamer reports that the launcher is loading in offline mode for players who have previously launched specific games on the service. Multiplayer titles like Grand Theft Auto Online and Red Dead Redemption Online remain inaccessible on PC for the time being, however. And for those launching recently downloaded titles like the GTA Definitive Trilogy for the first time, a required online authentication check will fail during the outage.

As Ars' own Sam Machkovech put it in his overall negative impressions of the remastered games:

While the games' authentication process may return before long, the fact that the games need to check in online is maddening. These games include zero online functionality—not even friend leaderboards, let alone the two-player mode from San Andreas. This hobbling of the PC version is inexcusable.

The outage comes one month after Rockstar removed downloadable versions of the original Grand Theft Auto trilogy games from console and PC storefronts ahead of the remaster's release. Anyone who previously purchased those editions can still download and play them on their original platforms. Those versions also make use of the Rockstar Launcher on PC, though, meaning fresh downloads are still locked for the time being.

Rockstar has given no indication of when it expects its PC services to be restored. We'll let you know if and when we hear more.

Seit gestern ist die Remastered-Version von GTA3 und der Ableger Vice City und San Andreas verfügbar, und zwar für Konsolen und PC. Doch Käufer der PC-Version können Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition nicht spielen, da der Rockstar-Launcher offline ist. Rockstar Games und PC ist seit jeher ein Thema, das für Diskussionen sorgt. Denn vor allem im Zusammenhang mit Grand Theft Auto bekommt der Entwickler immer wieder den Vorwurf zu hören, dass man diese Gaming-Plattform stiefmütterlich behandelt, und nun werden diese Stimmen erneut laut. Mehr als das: PC-Gamer sind sauer, denn sie können seit mittlerweile mehr als 16 Stunden nicht auf ihre gekaufte Grand Theft Auto 3-Remastered-Trilogie zugreifen (via VGC).

Gestern Abend unserer Zeit hat Rockstar nämlich auf Twitter mitgeteilt: "Die Dienste für den Rockstar Games Launcher und die unterstützten Titel sind wegen Wartungsarbeiten vorübergehend offline. Die Dienste kehren zurück, sobald die Wartung abgeschlossen ist." Das Wort Wartungsarbeiten ist wohl freundlich formuliert, denn mittlerweile kann man vermutlich von größeren Problemen sprechen.

Rockstar zeigt erstmals, wie Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy aussieht

Denn natürlich ist eine "Wartung" am Tag eines so wichtigen Launches nicht geplant. Ein weiterer Hinweis auf größere Probleme ist der Umstand, dass die PC-Fassung aktuell auch nicht mehr im Online-Store von Rockstar erhältlich ist. Auch heute Vormittag sah es nicht so aus, als würde Rockstar den Launcher und das Spiel bald wieder zum Laufen bringen. Denn auf Twitter schrieb der Support des Entwicklers: "Wir danken euch für die Geduld und das Verständnis, während wir weiter an der Wiederherstellung der Dienste für den Rockstar Games Launcher und die unterstützten Titel arbeiten." Die Launcher-Downtime bedeutet übrigens auch eine Zwangspause für andere Titel, also Games wie Red Dead Redemption 2 und Grand Theft Auto 5.

Download Rockstar Games Launcher - Spiele-Client für GTA und Co.

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Update November 14: The GTA Trilogy became available again via the Rockstar Launcher earlier today. Here's the official statement from Rockstar's status page:

"We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience. We are also working to improve and update overall performance as we move forward. We would like to thank everyone for their patience as we resolve these issues."

Original story below.

Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy is being sold on PC through the Rockstar store, which uses the Rockstar Games Launcher: a desktop app much like Battle.net or UPlay. Unfortunately, shortly after Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy's release yesterday, the Rockstar Games Launcher went on the fritz and has now been down for more than 16 hours.

Rockstar did issue a brief statement via social media that it would be "temporarily offline for maintenance."

Services for the Rockstar Games Launcher and supported titles are temporarily offline for maintenance. Services will return as soon as maintenance is completed.November 11, 2021

A couple of hours ago the Rockstar account added: "We thank you for your patience and understanding as we continue to work on restoring services for the Rockstar Games Launcher and supported titles."

Patience and understanding? On the internet? Needless to say some people are having kittens about this, and it is truly unfortunate that it's happened alongside the release of GTA: The Trilogy. The fact that the whole launcher is down means this is also affecting players across Rockstar's games. PCG has contacted Rockstar for comment, and will update with any response.

How to check the Rockstar Games Launcher's status

Rockstar Games has a service status page on its website with information for its games across consoles and PCs. As of this writing, the Rockstar Games Launcher is still showing red across the board for authentication, store access, cloud services and downloads. It's completely down, in other words, but you can refresh the page above for news.

Along with the launcher, the status page shows that GTA Online and Red Dead Online are also both down on PC. The console versions and Rockstar Social Club are all green.