Rockstar Games: every game, 13 studios, the launcher and its error codes

Rockstar Games is an American game publisher and developer, best known for the Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead series. The company was set up in 1998 in New York as a division of Take-Two Interactive, which shortly before had bought the British publisher BMG Interactive, the publisher of the first GTA. Its founders include Sam Houser, Dan Houser, Terry Donovan, Jamie King and Gary Foreman.

The Scottish studio DMA Design, makers of the first GTA, moved to Take-Two in 1999 and has been called Rockstar North since 2002. It is the studio behind the main GTA games. Dan Houser, writer of GTA and Red Dead, left Rockstar in March 2020 and now runs his own company, Absurd Ventures. Sam Houser leads Rockstar as president, the title Take-Two has used for him.

Rockstar's owner is Take-Two Interactive. Besides Rockstar, Take-Two owns the 2K and Zynga labels, and the holding company is led by Strauss Zelnick. Take-Two's next quarterly report comes out on November 9, 2026, ten days before GTA 6 launches.

Rockstar's careers page currently lists 13 divisions. The company makes its big games jointly, so the credits of RDR2 or Max Payne 3 simply say "Rockstar Studios".

In fall 2025 Rockstar fired 34 employees in the UK and Canada. The company cited a leak of confidential information; the IWGB union called the firings union-busting and filed a lawsuit. As of late October 2026 no court ruling has been made public.

Below are the main games Rockstar has released as publisher, with the release year and first platforms. The links lead to our sections on those games, which also cover where you can buy them today.

The full Rockstar catalog is longer and includes smaller projects too: Smuggler's Run, State of Emergency, Table Tennis, Beaterator, GTA: London 1969. The first GTA games were made by DMA Design before the studio became Rockstar North.

The Rockstar Games Launcher is a Windows app for buying, downloading and launching Rockstar's PC games. It came out on September 17, 2019, replacing the old Social Club client. The launcher updates games, stores saves in Rockstar Cloud and handles copy protection. Even if you bought GTA V or RDR2 on Steam or Epic, you need a Rockstar account to play.

Requirements: Windows 10 64-bit, a Core 2 Quad Q6600 or Phenom 9850 class CPU, 2 GB of RAM, a DirectX 11 graphics card and 1 GB of storage. Windows 7 and 8 have been officially unsupported since January 30, 2024. There are no Mac or Linux versions.

Where to download it. Only from Rockstar's official site (the Rockstar Games Launcher page on socialclub.rockstargames.com). Do not install third-party "builds" of the launcher: at best they are out of date.

Offline mode works only if you have already signed in online on that computer with Remember me checked and recently launched the game with an internet connection. GTA Online needs UDP ports 6672 and 61455–61458 open.

The Service Status page on support.rockstargames.com shows the state of Rockstar's servers: GTA Online, Red Dead Online, account sign-in and the launcher itself. On October 31, 2026 all services were up.

The most common errors and what Rockstar's official support (support.rockstargames.com) recommends. Before reinstalling anything, check the service status page: if the outage is on Rockstar's side, all you can do is wait.

A clean reinstall of the launcher, as Rockstar describes it:

1. Run uninstall.exe from C:\Program Files\Rockstar Games\Launcher. Do not check the option to remove game data.
2. Delete the folders Documents\Rockstar Games\Social Club and Documents\Rockstar Games\Launcher, plus Launcher and Social Club in Program Files\Rockstar Games and Social Club in Program Files (x86)\Rockstar Games.
3. Restart your computer and install the launcher from the official site.

After reinstalling, sign in to your account: your purchased games are tied to it, not to the computer.

GTA+ is a paid subscription for GTA Online on PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC (GTA V Enhanced only). In the US it costs $7.99 a month (October 31, 2026). Members get GTA$500,000 every month, GTA Online bonuses and access to a game library.

The GTA+ Games Library currently includes GTA V, GTA Online, Red Dead Redemption, GTA: The Trilogy – Definitive Edition, GTA III and Vice City Definitive Edition, GTA: Liberty City Stories, GTA: Chinatown Wars, plus Bully and L.A. Noire. Max Payne, Manhunt and Midnight Club are not included. The library changes over time, and you can play only on the platform where your subscription is active. More on the GTA Online page.

English is the original language of Rockstar's games, so English speakers play them as they were written and recorded. In GTA V, for example, the voice acting is English only, while the interface is translated into 13 languages. Rockstar Store and PlayStation Store list the supported languages on each game's page, so check there before buying if you want menus or subtitles in another language.

Fan translations exist for some Rockstar games. Rockstar does not support them, so install such mods only in single-player modes and keep a backup of your files.