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I've just reinstalled GTA V last week and I was very surprised to find out that I now have to install a rootkit to run it.

They had the balls to add a mandatory kernel extension into a game that I've bought 10 years ago and that I wish to play in single player only.

I find it utterly ridiculous. As usual, piracy would have been the superior experience.

Add ‘-nobattleye’ to the Steam command-line launch options and you can play single-player without any installs.

(Rockstar really should’ve made this a separate launch option like other games do)

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I stopped getting Rockstar games for PC when the Steam store page for Max Payne 3 was lying that a rockstar club account was only required for multiplayer. Turns out it was mandatory for single player too instead.

I did get GTA V for playstation, and indeed you can play single player without the rockstar account. Probably Sony forcing them to allow that, I don't think they did it out of the goodness of their hearts.

However, every time you start the game you get a screen pushing you towards multiplayer. And the single time I did click on some multiplayer related options, they spammed my playstation system notifications with 'there are new events in GTA online' even in weeks I didn't start their title at all.

So... good bye, rockstar. Your games are getting too big for their own good anyway.

We need to stop normalizing the idea that businesses can change the offer of a purchased product after the fact.

> These companies are all run by CEOs who got their MBAs at Darth Vader University, where the first lesson is “I have altered the deal, pray I don’t alter it further.”

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/playstationed

Piracy shouldn’t feel like the "premium version" of a product...
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Big game publishers will inevitably flex the “we can impose any restrictions we want at any time, go sue us” in your face at some point. Piracy is indeed the superior experience, unfortunately, though I would add a caveat that as a rule it does not apply to indie titles.

(At least while they stay indie… Not long ago I was reinstalling Minecraft after a long break and found out that Microsoft has the balls to demand that I verify a phone number to play a game I bought more than 10 years ago. Like with GTA V’s rootkit, they don’t care if you want to play single-player—once you’re locked out of the loader, you’re locked out and no human will help you.)

One of the reasons I run a PS5 instead.

AFAIK, there's fewer cheaters on PlayStation current-gen than on PC, and I don't have to worry about anti-cheat kludges corrupting my "rig".

You mean all the anti-cheat options are pre-built into your rig?
Yes, so you don’t have to run a rootkit on a machine that you might file your taxes on.
I would bet 90% of people here have at least another laptop if they have a gaming PC, if you’re concerned about being compromised by rootkits, just do your taxes on that.
So you own one machine and Rockstar owns the other?
Well that was supposed to be the deal with the PlayStation, too.
"Your computer calls me root too"
There's nothing "just" about compromising one of my machines so badly that I don't trust it to file my taxes on any more.
Yes. It's kind of an odd situation, because it's one where it's a benefit to me if other people are running anti-cheat. A limited sort of remote attestation that the people you're playing with aren't running certain kinds of software that peeks into or alters the memory image of the game or its graphics drivers.
Which is fine on a device that you only use for gaming, or am I missing something?
Well, you run untrusted code in your local network.

Then again, we all trust our "smart" devices even if we really don't.

I suppose a separate network would be the safe option (if you trust your router).

That said, have there been rotten meat attacks using "temporarily above temperature" fridges?

Are vegans just applying a defensive strategy against those?

Not nearly every "gaming PC" is used for only that.

When I grew up, I had one PC to do everything: Homework, gaming, learning to program, storing the single copy of treasured family photos, gaining painful experience in why to make backups before modifying the MBR to dual-boot Linux...

Especially with iPads and Chromebooks becoming more prevalent in an education context, a "gaming PC" might well be the only computer that gives the user full control over it that many children have access to these days.

I get where both sides are coming from.

On the one hand, buying a console and a reasonably spec'd laptop is clearly the better value. I did this during college, and both my laptop, and my console both lasted about a decade without requiring any upgrades. I did this again with the PS4. You wind up spending far less than you otherwise would trying to keep a gaming pc reasonably up to date, and both devices are optimized for their usage.

On the other hand? At some point most of us will realize that we've been successful enough that we don't have to optimize for value, and we can choose 'all of the above'. I now have a PS5 AND a stupidly overspec'd AI / gaming desktop. I've enjoyed having both.

Computers were much more expensive back in the days and would be obsolete much faster.

Nowadays for 50€ you can have a decent second hand computer with an older gen core i5 and 8 to 16GB of memory. That is plenty enough to run qubesOS.

You’ve just got Sony watching over you and transcribing your audio conversations with friends.
“Shoot that guy” “Ok”

Super valuable stuff.

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This is the exact reason why is started with streaming services for games (Gfore/boosteroid/game pass). Next the anti-cheat thing I also spend less waiting for updates. And this way I can still play these games with my buddies.
So why didn't you pirate it? At some point people need to stop complaining and start putting their money where their mouth is.
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Honest question.

Would a Windows10-11 user be able to tell there are "rootkits" embedded in installations, without looking at the (optional) disclosures made available now on steam ?

In other words, what guarantee is there that if i'm buying a game from Steam, or say GOG, that there's no quasi-malware riding along with the game install ?

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What's even worse is with this update they completely cut off Linux users. It had been performing better than on W*ndows but they had to ruin the game.

Surely this is foreshadowing the future of GTA VI and will have the same problems of being unplayable.

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