The global hit of the gaming industry with a billion audience called ” Grand Theft Auto V5 ” was released back in 2015 (for PC, for PS and Xbox in 2013), but it continues to be the most popular game for 5 years now. Despite such a considerable age, the game continues to “delight” users with all sorts of bugs, freezes and errors, some of which do not lend themselves to a guaranteed solution. One of these problems causing massive misunderstanding of players is the unavailability of the servers of the developer Rockstar, which causes the error “Unable to connect to the Rockstar servers to activate GTA V. To activate GTA V, an Internet connection is required.”. At the same time, this problem is sometimes massive in nature, which already leads to certain thoughts. So what are the reasons for the error, what are the methods of returning the servers to work, and do they exist? All this will be discussed further.
Eliminate the problem of accessing Rockstar servers.
Identifying the causes of the error
The first step is to determine the reasons for which Rockstar game services are currently unavailable. Users come across this message quite often. But why this is happening, no one can answer for sure. As far as it is now known, despite the considerable period and frequency of the problem in question, the specific reasons for its occurrence have not been identified by the developers, therefore, there are simply no guaranteed solutions for its solution, unfortunately. The complexity and ambiguity of the situation is also characterized by the fact that some users manage to log in to the “Social Club”, but upon further attempts to launch, the above notification appears, and some cannot log into the client at all. Based on this,
If the reason is the user’s equipment
Faced with a notification that Rockstar game services are currently unavailable to the user, you need to try to fix the problem from your side. On this score, there are several recommendations that often turn out to be quite effective and efficient:
- “Reboot the router” in any convenient way – through a button on the router case or through the web interface.
Yes, everything can be so commonplace that a simple reboot fixes the server’s unavailability. Perhaps this is due to insufficient speed indicators of the Internet connection, which may be the result of excessive load on the network (torrents, online games, Smart TV, etc.). If the reboot really restored the availability of connection to the servers, then you should seriously think about switching to a more optimal tariff with the provider, so that your traffic needs match the capabilities. An alternative option is to differentiate traffic for each device on the network. Allocate certain quotas for the computer (leaving most of it for it) and distribute the rest to smartphones, TVs, tablets or any other devices that use the Internet in one way or another.
- “Maximum unloading of the computer.” Disable all software (within reasonable limits) that can put a significant load on the processor, video card, network card . Disable, or better remove and forget, all “operating system optimizers”, the only exception is “CCleaner” and similar time-tested utilities (for example, “DISM ++”).
On the official developer forum, you can find the following suggestion, which should definitely be taken into account, especially if the error appeared immediately after installing the game:
- Open Task Manager.
- If among the presented processes there are “GTA5.exe”, “PlayGTAV.exe” and “GTAVLauncher.exe”, shut them down.
- Open the executable file with administrator rights to restart the game.
In addition, use the standard method for identifying software problems caused by the activity of third-party software (including virus), for this:
- Press “WIN + R” and execute “msconfig”.
- Go to the Services tab.
- Check the box next to “Do not display Microsoft services”.
- Sort the list by the Status column and disable any suspicious services .
All that remains is to restart the PC and try again to start the game.
- “Updating drivers and operating system software.” Regardless of how you feel about the update functionality, this is an extremely important aspect of the stable operation of most games and software, especially when using Windows 10, where the OS itself has delegated most of the responsibility for keeping the system up to date.
First of all, run a search for uninstalled updates, for this:
- Click “Start” and open “Settings”.
- Go to the Update & Security section.
- Click on the “Check for Updates” button.
- Wait for the search results and initiate the download and installation of the updates found.
Get ready to restart your computer. Next, open the “Device Manager” by running the command “devmgmt.msc” and note if there are any devices unrecognized by the system among the presented components. If such components are present, right-click on it and select “Update driver” and then:
- Click “Search automatically for updated drivers.”
- Wait for the search results.
- If the driver installation does not bring results, in the last step select “Search for drivers on this computer”.
- Next, “Select a driver from the list of available drivers on your computer.”
- Complete the installation of the proposed version and click on “Action” – “Update hardware configuration”.
Check the health of the servers.
- “Checking your computer’s network settings.” There is a certain possibility that the network settings were subject to changes, authorized or not – that’s another matter.
To check, you need to do the following:
- Open the “Network and Sharing Center”.
- Click on the line “Change adapter parameters”.
- Select the adapter you are using and open its properties by clicking the right mouse button.
- Open the properties for IP Version 4 (TCP / IPv4).
- Check the correctness of the entered data (IP address, gateway, dns servers).
- Click on the “Advanced” button and make sure that there are no unauthorized changes in the sections presented there.
- If you are receiving data in manual mode, try switching to automatic mode.
- Or vice versa, manually set the values for “DNS servers”, specifying the addresses of your provider or any public, convenient for you, for example,
- “Google” is “8.8.8.8” and “8.8.4.4”.
- Yandex – 77.88.8.8 and 77.88.8.1.
- Save the settings and reboot the router if necessary.
In addition, here it will not be superfluous to remind you about security for gaining access to the web interface of the router. Change the default values of the username and password to your own, in order to at least minimize the risk of possible unauthorized access. It is also worth highlighting one of the methods proposed in the open spaces of the forum, which, according to users’ assurances, can have a positive effect on solving the problem. It consists in using a smartphone / tablet as a wireless access point. This can be done in any convenient way. For example, turn on the mobile Internet and distribute it to a PC via a wireless Wi-Fi network (by activating the corresponding item in the device settings) or connect a mobile gadget to a computer using a cable and use it as a “USB modem”.
After connecting to the new network, try to re-enter the game, and in case of a positive result after loading the network parameters, reconnect the computer to the old network. And the last thing in this paragraph is checking the relevance of the date and time, which directly affects the correctness of the Internet connection. Open “Options” – “Time and language” and check the box next to “Set time automatically”.
- “Comprehensive virus scan”. Comprehensive scanning involves the use of several anti-virus tools and scanning not only the computer itself, but also all storage devices connected to it, since the source of infection may be located on them.
As tools, you can use a proven bundle – “Doctor Web Cureit” – “Adw Cleaner” – “Malwarebytes”.
But if even after that the servers are not available anyway, then the developers themselves are probably to blame. It is because of them that Rockstar GTA 5 cannot be launched.
Unfortunately, nothing can be done about it. But on the other hand, this is a confirmation of the guess that everything is in order on the part of the user. That is, you do not need to make changes to the settings, you do not need to be smart about connecting to the Internet. Sometimes it’s enough just to be patient and wait.
