GTAV launch marred by username bug

April 14, 2015 | 11:36

Tags: #bug #crash #grand-theft-auto-v #gtav #launch #pc-game

Companies: #rockstar

The long-awaited launch of Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto V on PC was marred last night by the discovery of a nasty bug which prevents the game from installing correctly under certain Windows usernames.

Delayed for final polishing and finally made available to the masses at midnight last night, GTAV on PC offers an experience unmatched by its console equivalents. Its multi-disc install, or multi-gigabyte download, comes with 4K-resolution textures for those whose systems can handle it, but a few fans have been complaining that the game refuses to install regardless of specification - or installs but refuses to run, displaying an error message while trying to download an update.

The problem, Rockstar has admitted, is poor handling of unusual usernames. 'We have identified an issue where players with Windows usernames that include characters not found in the table at the bottom of this page will likely run into difficulties when attempting to download, install, or play GTAV,' the company explained in a support post late last night. 'We are currently working on a fix for this issue.'

The problem comes from users with non-alphanumeric usernames: anything that isn't a standard Roman-alphabet character - such as an accented letter, Unicode character, or symbol, making the flaw more likely to affect international users rather than those in native-English regions - throws the game for a loop, causing it to lose the location of various important files. While Rockstar is working on a fix, for now it has a workaround: create a new user account with administrative privileges and a standard alphanumeric username, then install and run the game through that account instead.

Rockstar has not offered a timescale for the release of a patch to properly fix the flaw.
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