Fuck Rockstar. I changed my email accounts a few years ago but forgot to change Rockstar first. This wasn’t a problem. Now, after buying GTA V on Xbox and Steam and sinking a lot of time into it over two accounts, they added some mandatory launcher on Steam that forces you to login to their Social Club. Mandatory launcher calls an account that I can’t unlink, triggers mandatory 2FA to an email that doesn’t exist. They refuse to help despite my willingly handing over a lot of private information - their support system is as good as fake. The end result is I have sank >£100 in buying their games and they ensure that not only do I not get to continue my account on GTA V, but I have been permanently locked out and actually impossible to play any Rockstar Social - walled game on Steam.
Partial ‘correspondence’ of my third attempt to get help from them. Twice they ignored the support subject.
Judging by other complaints online this exact issue has persisted and screwed over players since the creation of GTA V, so at least 12 years.
I have the same issue with Activision, and here’s the kicker. They’re exactly the same blueprint. Same support. Same result. Same fake-ass Western names on their signature.
I feel like Rockstar needs to be continuously pressured, injustices talked about, just in case they give.
Just don’t give corps like Rockstar money.
Additional:
(from Schwaggaccino • 2y ago • Reddit)
I emailed Rockstar and started a request ticket and they want me to log in to get me to reset my 2FA which is preventing me from logging in.
THIS IS PEAK CLOWN WORLD I CAN’T BELIEVE SOMEONE ACTUALLY GOT PAID TO IMPLEMENT THIS JOKE OF A SYSTEM
Edit: For the time being it seems they have disabled all support as none of my support requests are going through, even with omitting data and using VPN multiple times… I’ve had seven unsuccessful tickets and was just brainstorming how to automate the requests.
Final Edit: Thanks for your responses everyone, looks like legal is the only route. After 24h my support requests are still being auto blocked (not submitting as there’s no delay before response), and I am skeptical they switched off support for that long, even if it is fake, so they just blacklisted my details I think.
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Why don’t you request a refund from Steam? If the game doesn’t work because they changed it then I want my money back.
Everyone in the comments making such a huge deal of account security when literally all Rockstar had to do was allow people to unlink their Steam accounts from Social Club. It could even be done in their own launcher, with the credentials of the Steam account that actually owns the game. Then people could just make a new Social Club account, it’s not worth shit anyways.
They’re locking people out of playing a local, offline game, over some decade old account that I used my spam email for, and now I’m supposed to remember it? Get a fucking grip bro.
This isn’t unique to Rockstar. If the email you created an account with is dead, you’re screwed no matter who it is. I had this problem with Dropbox once. Luckily the email in question still existed, I just didn’t know it. However since it was on a friend’s server he was able to hook me back up.
I have the same issue and had the same result with Rockstar. Ubisoft managed to change my email though after providing proof of purchase. Fuck Rockstar, I’m sailing the seas with their games.
Somehow I had 3 separate Ubisoft accounts with differing games on them. After a short back-and-forth proving I was the account(s) owner, they actually did what I asked. They combined all 3 accounts into one and combined my games catalog.
The corporation sucks ass, but their support did me a solid.
Have you tried using FiveM? Last I knew it didn’t require social club access.
I dunno man, I’d kind of rather you lose your account rather than Rockstar happily handing over my account to anyone who contacts support and claims they’re me but can’t access my email account.
You’re misunderstanding. They bought these games through Steam. Their proof of ownership of the account is that they have the Steam account. There’s no legitimate reason to lock the authorized Steam user out of the account.
I used to work for a company that Epic Games outsourced their support to. We were based in Athens, Greece. There were other companies receiving the same email pool on Helpdesk Bulgaria or Romania, as well as an Indian office, all supporting US customers via email.
We were paid 3.5eu / hour and our performance was micromanaged by counting how many replies we did per hour.
Hence, we had canned responses that we’d copy/paste to save time and maybe achieve a bonus for that month.
Unfortunately we ended up being shit on on reddit on multiple occasions because some poor guy misunderstood the request and a legitimate request would be promptly denied, even though it shouldn’t be. The level of English comprehension varied wildly among us.
All I’m saying is maybe Rockstar actually has a way to ID your account based on IP addresses, credit card used, date purchased if you have the receipt email, driver’s license etc and you’re just dealing with an underpaid dude in Eastern Europe not quite understanding you.
Usually if you threaten to sue they escalate to tier 2, so you may have more luck that way and tbh I don’t know about Rockstar, that’s how Epic did it back in 2018.
Maybe try explaining it a different way? I dunno but good luck.
Edit: I just saw the rest of the messages in your comment.
I wouldn’t have given you back the account either in their shoes. You just claim things that anyone could claim from their point of view, they have procedures they need to follow.
They can’t try your password, or see it anywhere and would never ask you for it either.
They’re asking simple things that you should have been able to verify. After that they’d likely ask for IP addresses and last 4 digits of card used etc.
They have to do this, or anyone’s account could be hacked by social engineering all too easy.
Thanks for the context, which led me to downvote this post. Come on, guys; not all complaints are valid.
It is valid to take people’s money and deny them the product? Interesting opinion…
It is valid for them to make sure accounts cannot be taken over by hostile actors, and it is valid for them to assume that you are able to notify them about email address changes in time.
Tell me, how many years did you have to resolve the situation regarding your email address before it came to this?
For all we know, it’s a 50/50 that the customer service guy receives back an email back from that email that supposedly is not accessible saying “WTF I have no idea what you’re talking about, was my account hacked?”
But since you’re that gullible - hey bro, that wallet in your back pocket is mine, I put it there when I washed my jeans. Hand it back now, I paid for it and I’m 100% entitled to it!!
No and it is shitty to implement this new authentication system after all these years, however should they just hand over any account to some rando writing an angry email? If that were the case, we’d be reading about that right now (“Rockstar gave my account away!”) instead of this.
Edit: I just saw the rest of the messages in your comment.
I wouldn’t have given you back the account either in their shoes. You just claim things that anyone could claim from their point of view, they have procedures they need to follow.
They can’t try your password, or see it anywhere and would never ask you for it either.
They’re asking simple things that you should have been able to verify. After that they’d likely ask for IP addresses and last 4 digits of card used etc.
They have to do this, or anyone’s account could be hacked by social engineering all too easy.
I honestly don’t see how you can turn the blame on him. It’s not his fault the support didn’t ask for the right things. It’s actually part of Rockstar support procedure to ask essentially public information like previous email addresses or previous nicknames. On my first try they asked the same things from me. On my second try they also asked for Steam purchase history and game keys. It’s not his fault the support fucked up and didn’t ask for the right things.
The thing is, and I think you’re missing this, he got those wrong. After being asked for email and Nickname he provides them and the support person says “I’m unable to verify that you own the account”, that means he answered wrong, yes those might be bad questions because some random person might know them, but he didn’t.
They will say “I’m unable to verify that you own the account” even if you give the correct answers to those questions. I know that because it literally happened to me.
Lol, YDI. When asked to provide the identifiable information, you just say “Stop and do the thing I want.” You seriously expect them to just hand over an account to someone who can’t provide basic information about it? You owned yourself, pal.
Look at the timestamps, the conversation is from top to bottom. So technically I guess he tried to answer, but he probably missed the answer and instead had a tone that happened to match exactly how a scammy email would sound.
If legitimate, it’s probably better that they didn’t get to successfully automating spamming the support system. Nothing screams legitimate requests like bot spamming… Don’t know the tone of his follow ups, but best to take a breath and reset their tone and try again, asking what other details aside from nickname can be used, given their steam access.
I think you meant “bottom to top”. But yes, that does change the tone a bit.
Social Club is the kind of account you use a throwaway email for, and just use whatever random nickname isn’t taken yet. I, personally, have no idea what the email or nickname to my Social Club account are. I also have bought GTA V through Steam back in 2015 and haven’t lived into Social Club since. I think it’s perfectly fair to expect that your Steam account shouldn’t be hijacked by Rockstar upon linking it to one Social Club account once.
At the very least, if they’re gonna have a Rockstar launcher, it should allow you to unlink your Steam account through it, using your Steam credentials, and free it up to link to a new Social Club account.
Just wait until that guy learns about Crypto
I’m just imagining their pure rage when reaching out to a Bitcoin Dev/maintainer whatever with something like „I don’t know what my Wallets name was, idk my 10 phrase password, but give me back my 10$ in Btc right now”
And then pasting this again with the Title DONT BUY BTC THEY SCAM YOU
Dude, treat every service like your wallet.
You have an Email, you have a password. If you forget these, consider everything the Support does as an extra service and not the bare minimum.
I know this is probably not helping but ideally you’d want to go through this process
If this process is not working people might want to report on it.
What exactly happened that leads to your conclusion that none of your support requests are going through? And why was it not possible to continue the on-going support request that you showed in your screenshot?
Looking at the conversation, you do sound like a hackerkid™ trying to social engineer itself into someones rockstar account
You should give them the info they ask for
Also, the poor indian dude answering you probably doesn’t have access to you crew’s name in gtav or anything like that.Yeah this is the cancer that is email 2FA.
Unfortunately email is the only way they have to verify your identity. No email, no account. But this is very much not exclusive to Rockstar.
I changed my email a couple of years ago and it’s absolutely astonishing how many companies are completely unequipped to deal with someone changing or deleting their email account.
Unfortunately email is the only way they have to verify your identity. No email, no account.
That isn’t really true, I’ve restored access to multiple game accounts before in situations where I lost access to my email, it mostly involved providing information about the account that only the person using it would know, like the names of characters on it and some other stuff. If a company can’t handle this it’s because they don’t want to pay for competent customer support workers and just rely entirely on lazily coded automated systems.
Yes, it is the lazy way to secure accounts. No defense there.
Don’t give them money because you aren’t able to keep your email address updated? Don’t give them money because you are not able to provide the information they need to verify you are who you say you are?
I’ve worked costumer support for many years, and me and my supervisors would have rejected your request too. Since you can’t provide what they want (not even a definite nickname wtf), you probably can’t prove the purchase either.
Don’t flame some poor support guy or a company, kick yourself in the ass for letting it slide for so long that you cant even remember the original nickname anymore and chalk it up as a learning experience - we’ve all been there.
Well then can we flame them (rockstar) for turning off Linux support on GTA V Online? I know the exact same anticheat works on linux, because I am playing Dune online and it’s working just fine. So yeah, back to that, fuck rockstar!
yeah, that’s a flameable offense, i agree.
A lot of private information
Public nicknames, passwords and emails that could be fished from public dumps and retried, public crew names… Where’s the private and where is the a lot?
Also you’re not even paying attention. You called someone Aaron well after they’ve left the conversation.
Yeah I wouldn’t have let you in either with that hostility and level of vaguery
My daughter played on my account while she was a minor and didn’t have her own rig. She got a gaming PC and her own steam account and is grown now, has her own copy of gtav.
But my account is tied to her email. Almost every time I want to play I have to call her. I’d just buy another copy on a steam sale but, “you already own this game”.
Assuming you don’t care enough about your progress, can’t you just log out of the R* launcher with your own login?
