Rockstar Games from Epic Games

This page covers different problems related to launching Rockstar Games owned in Epic.

Rockstar Launcher opens showing the option to buy the game / Says the game is not owned

IMPORTANT: Starting Heroic 2.17, all this process should be automated for GTAV and RDR2 for Linux and Mac. If it's not, you can configure the Environment Variables of the game to include USE_FAKE_EPIC_EXE=true in the Advanced tab in the game's settings:

If you are on WINDOWS, you have to do these steps manually:

• Download the custom EpicGamesLauncher.exe file from https://github.com/BananaWorks07/heroic-epic-integration/releases/latest/download/EpicGamesLauncher.exe (this is NOT the real Epic Games Launcher, it's just a wrapper exe with the same file name)
• Put the EpicGamesLauncher.exe file in the install directory of the game (next to the PlayGTAV.exe or PlayRDR2.exe files)
• Create a text file (1) called fix.bat in the install directory (next to the PlayGTAV.exe) with this content start "" EpicGamesLauncher.exe PlayGTAV.exe %* (replace with PlayRDR2.exe as needed) (2)
• In the game's settings in Heroic, in the Advanced tab, select the created fix.bat file in the Select an alternative EXE to run field

Then run the game.

The Rockstar Launcher should open, and, while loading, it should launch the game without getting to the main screen of the Rockstar Launcher.

(1) Make sure the file is a plain text file and not a rich text file (2) I haven't seen confirmation of the file name for other games like Red Dead Redemption 1, but it's probably a similar pattern

Denied Anticheat message for GTAV on Linux and Mac

Rockstar updated the game's anticheat solution and did NOT allow running GTA Online on either Mac nor Linux. Because of this, when trying to install GTAV, an dialog will show up explaining this and won't allow the installation of the game.

The story mode does work though, and you can configure Heroic to not block the installation of games with broken anticheat support going to General Settings (in the sidebar) > Advanced > Toggle on the setting "Allow installation of games with broken or denied anticheat".

After that, the game can be installed (though Online mode will still not work).

GTA V Enhanced Edition

On Linux, you'll need GE-Proton9-27 or newer. It seems to fail with 10-31 and 10-32, use 10-30 if it fails to open the Rockstar Launcher.

On Mac, the Enhanced version of the game currently does not work.

Error "ucrtbase.dll._strerror_s" on Linux

Users have reported that deleting the prefix and installing vcrun2019 fixes this issue (game settings in heroic > wine tab > winetricks > search vcrun2019 > install).

Rockstar Games on MacOS

To run GTAV or RDR2 on Mac, neither the free wine-crossover wine nor the game porting toolkit that can be installed with Heroic work.

The only option that works on Mac is to use the commercial version of Crossover. Using a Windows 10 bottle seems to work the best.

GTAV Online

This will ONLY work on Windows. Rockstar added Battleye anticheat without enabling the Linux support https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/09/grand-theft-auto-v-gets-battleye-anti-cheat-breaks-online-play-on-steam-deck-linux/. This means online does NOT work on Linux nor MacOS and there's nothing that can be done to fix that.

Red Dead Redemption 2 fails to open with exited unexpectedly

This is meant to solve this issue:

In Heroic, in the game's settings, in the Environment variables table, add this one (check attached image on how it should look like after added) Variable Name => WINEDLLOVERRIDES, Value => vulkan-1=n,b. It should look like this:

Read Dead Redemption 2 fails to initialize graphics device

There are 2 options:

• installing the VulkanRT redistributable
• or, configure the app to use DirectX

For the first option:

• Open the game's settings in heroic
• Wine tab
• Click "Run exe in prefix"
• Select the "VulkanRT...exe" file in the "Redistributables" folder inside the game's install directory

For the second option:

• look for a file called system.xml insdie the RDR2 prefix, it should be in something like ... .../Games/Heroic/Prefixes/Red Dead Redemption 2/drive_c/users/steamuser/Documents/Rockstar Games/Red Dead Redemption 2/Settings/system.xml
• open the file with a text editor and look for a line that looks like this: <API>kSettingAPI_Vulcan</API> and change it to look like this <API>kSettingAPI_DX12</API> (replacing Vulcan with DX12), and save the change

Now the game should launch properly

"com.epicgames.launcher" protocol issue (only on Windows)

Note

These steps are only required on Windows. Heroic will automatically apply them on macOS and Linux

When launching a Rockstar title from the Epic Games store, you will encounter the following message:

To resolve this, do one of the following:

Option 1: Use .reg file

Download this .reg file: https://legendary.gl/assets/fnv_fix.reg
Double-click it to merge it into your current registry (feel free to delete the file afterwards)

Option 2: Add the key yourself

Open up an administrative PowerShell by right-clicking the Windows logo in your taskbar and choosing "Windows PowerShell (Admin)". This will prompt you for administrative access, choose "Yes" there. In the command prompt that opens, type in reg add HKCR\com.epicgames.launcher /f and press enter. Once you've done that, the command prompt should look like this: