After Rockstar launched their new wee store client doodad this week, folks who wanted to play Grand Theft Auto V offline on PC were finding themselves unable to. Did Rockstar sneak in a new DRM measure when wedging the new Rockstar Games Launcher into the game’s guts? Naw, they say it was a bug, and now it’s fixed. The fix does involve going online one last time, mind.

Rockstar launched their Launcher on Tuesday. It’s a new store/client/updater doodad of their own which could be read as a portent that they’re thinking about launching some big new game on PC away from Steam. Anyway, while the Launcher has little purpose at presence, it is now required to launch Grand Theft Auto V (yes, on Steam too). And some technical hiccup meant that it was blocking people from playing the open-world murder simulator offline.

Having recognised the problem and said they were working on it on Tuesday, Rockstar have now issued a fix. You’ll need to go online to update the Launcher as well as GTA V, then run them both. After that, you should be able to go offline and play in a cave.

Rockstar are currently giving away GTA: San Andreas free for installing the launcher. It’s an oldie but a goodie. You’ll likely need to install the Launcher anyway if you ever have GTA V update on Steam.

Who’s even still playing GTA V singleplayer these days? Ah, I do still sometimes like to fire it up and just cruise around, drive through the city at night, take a stroll, mess with some citizens, find a pretty swimming spot in the wilds, maybe steal a sensible family car for some xtreme off-roading. I usually do that in GTA Online but will take it to singleplayer if the load times or hackers are being particularly awful – and certainly would if I were offline, obvs. It is a pleasant world to simply be in.

Disclosure: I have some pals at Rockstar because every Edinburgh resident knows at least three Rockstar folks, even if they think they don’t. Rockstareers are everywhere. Always.