L.A. Noire "Patch" mandates use Rockstar Games Launcher and Social Club account

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[Incident]

In April 2021, Rockstar Games released update (v2663.1.0.0) for the Steam version of L.A. Noire that officially mandated the use of the Rockstar Games Launcher and a Rockstar Social Club account, even for single-player offline play. This patch, which replaced the previous social club client with the modern launcher, also introduced online-only DRM check-ins, removing the ability to play the game completely offline. Preventing buyers of the product access to it unless they created a Rockstar account. With no option given to decline this change, and being weeks/months/years after purchase, can also not obtain a refund from Steam. Leaving the customer only three options: create a Rockstar account, pirate the game, or abandon a product they paid for to never use it ever again. This creates a disturbing precedence, as in theory, any developer could "patch" their game years after the fact and institute new demands on customers to use the product, with no recourse to reject the change, or refund the product.

Users also reported this occurring when attempting to run L.A. Noire after the patch was applied, with no means to roll back due to the changes in the executable file (exe).

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Consumer response

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