Unable to play Red Dead Redemption 2

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1

hello,
let me say it from the beginning, I have a pirated copy of Red Dead Redemption 2 and I installed it manually from Fitgirl-Repacks, I also applied Empress V2 crack because the default one crashes the game when it should not
but after the prompted window about supporting Empress when I run the game, nothing happens
on the log we could find
https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/Y3rXdKhyXW/
my specs are:

██████████████████  ████████   bargo@bargo-g33500 
██████████████████  ████████   ------------------ 
██████████████████  ████████   OS: Manjaro Linux x86_64 
██████████████████  ████████   Host: G3 3500 
████████            ████████   Kernel: 5.15.12-1-MANJARO 
████████  ████████  ████████   Uptime: 21 hours, 43 mins 
████████  ████████  ████████   Packages: 1997 (pacman), 51 (flatpak), 25 (snap) 
████████  ████████  ████████   Shell: bash 5.1.12 
████████  ████████  ████████   Resolution: 1920x1080 
████████  ████████  ████████   DE: Plasma 
████████  ████████  ████████   WM: kwin 
████████  ████████  ████████   Theme: Breeze Light [Plasma], Breeze [GTK2/3] 
████████  ████████  ████████   Icons: [Plasma], breeze-dark [GTK2/3] 
████████  ████████  ████████   Terminal: konsole 
                               CPU: Intel i7-10750H (12) @ 5.000GHz 
                               GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti Mobile 
                               GPU: Intel CometLake-H GT2 [UHD Graphics] 
                               Memory: 7267MiB / 15668MiB

and thanks

1 Like
2

I think pirating games is not welcomed here.

With regards to R* and the GTA online problem there is a reason, but still illegal.

With that said, try looking here: https://www.protondb.com/app/1174180
Also GloriusEggroll proton versions.
Idk what’s in the log, just trial and error might help.

3

Build 1311.23+Crackfix.V2 (from Oct 2020) does NOT work on Linux through Lutris to my knowledge as I tried in the past with no success. but good news, build 1436.28 (from Feb 2022) does work. here is how to get build 1436.28 working through Lutris…

-Lutris v0.5.12 (I use this through the “.deb” file since the current v0.5.13 stops Mafia: Definitive Edition and Mafia III from working etc and I even had a small issue on RDR2 during startup but I clicked okay and it seemed fine after that, so you ‘may’ be able to use v0.5.13 on RDR2, but I suggest v0.5.12 as it does not have regressions like the current v0.5.13 does. I directly load the ‘RDR2.exe’ through Lutris when playing this game.)

-GloriousEggroll (i.e. “lutris-GE-Proton7-28-x86_64”. this can be installed through Lutris itself (i.e. open Lutris, on left side under ‘Runners’ hover mouse over ‘Wine’ and to the right you will see a ‘folder’ and ‘gear’ icon, click the ‘folder’ icon which will bring up ‘Manage wine versions’. click the ‘install’ to the right of ‘lutris-GE-Proton7-28’). or alternatively you can get it from Release Wine-GE-Proton7-28 Released · GloriousEggroll/wine-ge-custom · GitHub ; just extract “wine-lutris-GE-Proton7-28-x86_64.tar.xz” to “~.local\share\lutris\runners\wine”. but with that said, you can likely use GloriousEggroll versions a bit older and newer than this one without issue. also, to make sure the game is using this in Lutris… right click game shortcut > Configure > Runner options > Wine version > lutris-GE-Proton7-28-x86_64)

-Wine (nothing newer than 8.1 ‘development’ works on RDR2 build 1436.28 as I tried 8.2 from a clean profile and it fails, but 8.1 works. I also tried 5.17/6.0.1/6.17/7.0.2 and these work (I currently settled on v7.0.2))

TIP: if you want to create a separate wine prefix from your system install just for use with RDR2 I suggest using PlayOnLinux (since it’s nice and easy through GUI) and then adjusting Lutris to use the profile PlayOnLinux created. for example… in Lutris on your game RDR2 shortcut in the program, right click > Configure > Game options’, then on ‘Wine prefix’ type in the location of your profile you want to use with RDR2. for example… “/home/user/.PlayOnLinux/wineprefix/RDR2/”. note: I noticed without that last “/”, while it will still work, Lutris won’t log the ‘Time played:’. but with the last “/” it works as it should.

IMPORTANT: you MUST set Wine to use ‘Windows 10’ instead of the default Windows 7 otherwise the game won’t start! ; you can do this globally or just for the ‘RDR2.exe’. if you created the profile with PlayOnLinux, just load up PlayOnLinux select ‘Configure’ and on the ‘PlayOnLinux Configuration’ screen that loads, on the left hand side left click the profile you are using with RDR2 so it’s highlighted, then select ‘Wine’ tab, then click ‘Configure Wine’ and on the screen that loads, at the bottom you can select the ‘Windows 7’ and change it to ‘Windows 10’ and then apply. if you are using the ‘unofficial DLSS’ mod I mention below, on that same section where you clicked ‘Configure Wine’, to the right of that is ‘Registry Editor’ as you can import the ‘EnableSignatureOverride.reg’ file through here so that ‘NVIDIA DLSS’ will now be selectable in the game where as normally it won’t be (it’s really using FSR 2.0 but the game thinks you are using DLSS).

I got a desktop 3rd gen i5 CPU running at 3.5GHz paired with a 1050 Ti 4GB GPU and the game is quite stable as it’s not even crashed once on me after many hours of play (I must use the games default ‘Vulkan’ graphics API though as if you try using DirectX 12 I can’t get the game to start up at all).

I also use a unofficial DLSS mod github[.]com/YenLegion/RDRFSR2-DRMfree/releases which boosts my performance from 27.67fps to 37.15fps based on the games benchmark (using ‘Performance’ setting in relation to the ‘NVIDIA DLSS’ option within the game itself), which is a worthwhile performance improvement. but you got to import the ‘EnableSignatureOverride.reg’ file into the wine prefix you are using otherwise that mod won’t work. note: this mod is only worth using if you don’t have a Geforce 20 series or newer GPU as if you have one of those, just stick with the official DLSS support in RDR2 build 1436.28.

I am running Linux Mint v21.1-Xfce (which has a Ubuntu 22.04 LTS base) with a 5.15 kernel.

EDIT: here is RDR2 1436.28 running on my system…

4

I just figured out more stuff that I think is worth posting in relation to RDR2 build 1436.28 (and Mafia Definitive Edition (I would assume Mafia III to since it’s same graphics engine))…

I noticed after updating Lutris v0.5.12 to v0.5.13, like I was saying, Mafia: DE etc stops working (it’s like it’s not using the GPU as navigating the menu is pretty much dead slow etc) on my system installed Wine which is using Wine ‘development’ which is currently v8.14 and reverting to Lutris v0.5.12 works once again…

…but this time on Lutris v0.5.13 I tried a clean Wine v8.0.2 profile using PlayOnLinux to create it so it’s separate from my system Wine installation and then made Lutris v0.5.13 use that and, to my surprise, Mafia:DE works as expected once again with GE 7-28 or 8-12 or 8-13 etc. so I am guessing whatever happened, something got out of whack on my system installed “.wine” profile(?) (which is currently using Wine v8.14 (development)).

but on the negative side of things… when using GloriousEggroll’s 8-13 runner for Lutris v0.5.13, I noticed RDR2 build 1436.28 stopped working on a Wine v7.0.2 profile I created specifically for RDR2 build 1436.28 (as in my testing a while ago nothing newer than a clean Wine 8.1 (development) profile worked on Lutris v0.5.12 (it will be interesting to see if that’s still true or not on Lutris v0.5.13, but I did not test it yet). but I was using GE 8-13 and at this point I thought maybe Wine v7.0.2 was a bit too old, so I switched over to the Wine v8.0.2 profile created by PlayOnLinux that I was temporarily using for Mafia: DE and RDR2 build 1436.28 still refused to work. so I added in a ‘RDR2.exe’ entry in Wine v8.0.2 (still using Windows 10 mode as usual for the RDR2.exe) and tried to start the game through Lutris v0.5.13 and it would fail to start. so then I used PlayOnLinux to load up the ‘Configure Wine’, so I can configure the Wine settings on that specific version of Wine (separate from my system installed Wine) and checked the ‘RDR2.exe’ entry on ‘Libraries’ tab and noticed there is now another entry there that never used to be there, so there are now two entries when it’s always been just one to my knowledge, which are…

“amd_ags_x64 (builtin, native)” (this one has always been there)
“vulkan-1 (native)” (this is new and normally not there)

so I removed the ‘vulkan-1 (native)’ entry and applied my settings and exited that and tried starting the game again and, sure enough, GE 8-13 re-created it and the game does not start up. so I reverted to GE 8-12 and after removing that ‘vulkan-1 (native)’ entry and applying it etc, I then tried to start up RDR2 build 1436.28 and sure enough, this time it worked (I even switched Lutris v0.5.13 back to the Wine v7.0.2 profile I was generally using and that works fine to). so then I exited the game and checked the ‘Libraries’ tab and that ‘vulkan-1 (native)’ entry is no longer there. so apparently GE 8-13 now adds in ‘vulkan-1 (native)’ in relation to running RDR2.exe when you have the ‘RDR2.exe’ setup in Applications tab on Wine, which is apparently what stops RDR2 build 1436.28 from working.

in short… I can’t use any GE (GloriousEggroll) version newer than 8-12 otherwise RDR2 build 1436.28 won’t work as for whatever reason they changed it to automatically add that ‘vulkan-1 (native)’ entry, which stops the game from starting up.

bottom line… when it comes to RDR2 build 1436.28, it appears, at least on my setup (desktop 3rd gen i5 paired with a NVIDIA 1050 Ti 4GB with NVIDIA driver v525 series), you can’t use GloriousEggroll Lutris runner any newer than 8-12 (from July 21st 2023). I even tried GE’s 7-28 (from Sep 11th 2022) and that still works. and… I seemed to have solved my Mafia: Definitive Edition etc issue as, worst case, even if I can’t get it working on the newest development version of Wine (which maybe I can if I create a clean Wine profile with Wine v8.14 etc(?)), I can always create a Wine v8.0.2 prefix JUST for Mafia: DE in case the general use system Wine install (i.e. “.wine”) gets out of whack and does not work for those two games even though, as far as I can tell it (the Wine v8.14 (development)) still works on the rest of my games from a quick start up of some of them on Lutris v0.5.13.

p.s. I did not test GE 8-13 on Lutris v0.5.12 to see if it creates that ‘vulkan-1 (native)’ entry that stops RDR2 build 1436.28 from working.

but upon some quick testing a moment ago with Wine v8.14 (development), from a clean profile, “WINEPREFIX=~/.temp winecfg” (without the ") from terminal, so it creates a fresh v8.14 prefix separate from system installed Wine (which saves to “~/.wine”) and then making Lutris v0.5.13 use that with Mafia: DE using GE 8-13, it works. then I deleted the “.temp” profile and created it fresh (with same command I posted above), then clicked ‘OK’ with no configuration on the ‘Wine Configuration’ screen (as this defaults to Windows 10 mode which is required for RDR2 build 1436.28 to work to my knowledge) and then started RDR2 build 1436.28 from GE 8-12 and it basically works (so my claim of Wine no newer than v8.1 working apparently don’t hold up, at least not on a clean Wine v8.14 (development) prefix) but throws a temporary error screen ‘RDR2.exe’ and below that shows ‘Windows 7 Alert’ with some more text (see attached picture) and I click ‘Continue’ and it seems okay in my brief testing (occasionally instead of that picture showing it will be a similar window that’s very small, just enough to click the X to close it basically at which point the game closes and does not start up, but usually it gives you the full ‘Windows 7 Alert’ window and you can continue past this) as shown here…

RDR2_Wine814CleanProfileNoConfiguration

but to make it so that error in the picture does not appear, when you first load up the ‘Wine configuration’ screen initially (you can do it later if you want, which should have same effect) you can add-in the location of your ‘RDR2.exe’ (in ‘Applications’ section) and then with that entry highlighted select ‘Windows Version: Windows 10’ instead of the defaults of ‘Windows Version: Use global settings’ as I suspect this stops it from using the 30 entries in the ‘Libraries’ tab that are there by default on the ‘Default Settings’ entry in the ‘Applications’ tab which I suspect causes RDR2 to throw that error as once you change from ‘use global settings’ to ‘windows 10’, that error in the attached picture (the one I posted above) no longer occurs and the game just starts up like one would expect.

I just thought I would post this as this stuff might benefit others :wink:

EDIT (Sep 2nd 2023): I just recently learned (from user ‘jhu’ on these forums) that the proper way to setup a Lutris prefix is… to right click game shortcut you made in Lutris, ‘Configure > Game options’ and on ‘Wine prefix’ section make sure to use something like, for example, “/home/user/RDR2/” (without the ") (and make sure to swap ‘user’ with whatever your system is setup as). then when you start up the game Lutris will create it’s own Wine prefix in that location where your saved games will be etc (so you will now see a “RDR2” folder in ones Home folder in the file manager). just make sure you already got ‘GE 8-12’ in use on Lutris before doing this.

EDIT (Sep 3rd 2023): after some further testing a moment ago from a clean Wine profile created by Lutris using ‘GE 8-13’ (say “/home/user/RDR2TEST/” for example)… one can use ‘GE 8-13’ (and probably newer also) but you will have to put in a bit more effort to get it working since you basically have to remove the ‘vulkan-1 (native)’ entry in the Libraries tab in the ‘Wine configuration’ screen in relation to the ‘RDR2.exe’ that ‘GE 8-13’ automatically creates when first running the game.

so basically setup GE 8-13 (or newer) through Lutris like usual (make sure RDR2 is using ‘GE 8-13’ first!!!), then with the RDR2 shortcut you created in Lutris main window highlighted, click the ‘wine’ icon in the bottom center area of the main Lutris window, which will show you seven things to choose from, select ‘Wine configuration’ and on the screen that loads on the ‘Applications’ tab find ‘RDR2.exe’ entry, with that highlighted (if it’s not highlighted left click it once), click the ‘Libraries’ tab and highlight the ‘vulkan-1 (native)’ entry and to the right of that you select ‘Remove’ then click OK. now when you try starting RDR2 build 1436.28 in Lutris, it will work :wink:

basically it appears when Lutris creates the Wine prefix (with ‘GE 8-13’ etc) it no longer has to re-create data like it does when your using the system installed version of Wine as when you use the system installed version of wine and run the ‘Wine configuration’ screen window (i.e. ‘winecfg’ from terminal etc) it re-creates data from that and then you remove the ‘vulkan-1 (native)’ entry and save, and your settings are saved, but then when you go to startup the game through Lutris, apparently it detects some changes by the system installed Wine and then wants to re-create data from the ‘GE 8-13’ stuff in Lutris, which then re-adds the ‘vulkan-1 (native)’ entry, which then stops the game from working. but when you ONLY use the stuff through Lutris, which is the proper way, it will no longer re-create the data. hence, won’t re-add the problem vulkan-1 to the Libraries and the game will work as expected.

2 Likes
5

The instructions in your post still work perfectly!

Thank you, I’d searched for weeks to find a way to get this game running offline and I was able to do it because of your guidance.

I know some community members are quite critical of piracy and I am conditionally opposed generally speaking, but in the case of RockStar I completely support helping folks get this game running offline.

I bought another copy of RDR2 specifically to play offline on my Steam Deck while traveling, then a few months ago RockStar updated the game and removed the offline option from the RockStar launcher. There was a time when we could disable Steam updates for games, but Valve has removed that feature as well, so I had no choice but to take the update.

I’m sure somewhere in the 10,000 page ToS I agreed to this, but I don’t find that position a compelling argument to support RockStar in this case.

Retroactively implementing always online DRM for a game I purchased to play offline is inexcusable imho. I’d be happy to help a community member get a pirated game running under some circumstances, but not others. I think it depends on the game and the situation.

2 Likes
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I figured my post may potentially help some people in the future, and here you are :wink:

but yeah, I have never been a fan of games that force a online connection to a single player game, especially after that game has been out for a while since I imagine most game sales die down after a certain period of time, say maybe a year or two(?) (as I am sure Rockstar has more than made it’s money from RDR2 at this point since it’s been out for years now). because without a internet connection you basically can’t play the game which is all the more reason I prefer ‘alternatives’ to the official means since you can play it on any machine you want completely offline instead of the overly locked down junk which I just flat out avoid.

but given what you said with Rockstar further locking the game down, all the more reason the ‘alternative’ means of obtaining the game is far more appealing and it’s not like Rockstar is a small game company anyways as they won’t be going out of business anytime soon. basically build 1436.28 is just flat out the best way to play the single player game and you don’t have to deal with their force online junk.

but one issue I have seen a fair amount of people experience with build 1436.28 is the dreaded ‘Activation Error’ screen (I never had a problem on my desktops 3rd gen i5 CPU paired with a NVIDIA 1050 Ti 4GB GPU). but I ‘think’ it’s mainly a issue with the game itself, not the crack, since apparently even people on the legitimately bought version can experience that issue and if that happens, there is little one can do to fix it from what I can tell and even those who did fix it (by putting a heavy load on CPU temporarily etc and then starting the game (as you can see posts on Reddit talking about it)), it does not appear to be a fix for everyone as it works for some and not for others.

p.s. I even recently figured out how to get Hitman: World of Assassination ‘v3.160 + Peacock v6.5.1’ “offline” copy (although I am currently using Peacock v6.5.2 v2 cracked) working through Lutris etc (using the GloriousEggroll runner made for Lutris (i.e. github[.]com/GloriousEggroll/wine-ge-custom/releases (which is the standard one, which I used on RDR2 1436.28)) and the ‘Steam’ one (i.e. github[.]com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom/releases ) on Lutris). the ‘Steam’ one seems to be a bit better for this particular setup but it’s not as straight forward to install as normally on the one made for Lutris you can install from within Lutris itself, or use that first link to download (as it basically does the same thing), for example, “wine-lutris-GE-Proton8-17-x86_64.tar.xz” and then you would extract it to “~/.local/share/lutris/runners/wine” and then you can select it within Lutris at, right click game shortcut ‘Configure > Runner options’ and on ‘Wine version’ you select it here. but on that ‘Steam’ version, which is the second link I posted, you would download, for example, “GE-Proton8-16.tar.gz” and inside of that file is “GE-Proton8-16/files” folder. you need to specifically extract that ‘files’ folder to “~/.local/share/lutris/runners/wine” and then go to that folder in your file manager and then rename ‘files’ to a more proper name, say ‘GE-Proton8-16’. now start up Lutris and in Lutris on the game shortcut right click it ‘Configure > Runner options’ and on ‘Wine version’ select ‘GE-Proton8-16’ and it will now use this Steam version…

…but… I noticed when using the ‘Steam’ GE version, Lutris cannot create fresh profile data at ‘Configure > Game options’ and on the ‘Wine prefix’ section, for example, “/home/user/FreshProfileNameOfGameHere/” (as it throws a error when trying to start game as it can’t create the profile data). so what I did as a alternative, is use a similarly recent GE runner of the one made for Lutris to create the ‘Wine prefix’ by starting the game, which will trigger the wine prefix creation of the data, then exit game shortly after it starts, then change it to the ‘GE-Proton8-16’ and now when you start the game with that ‘Steam’ GE runner, it will work. I am not sure if that’s totally proper or not, but it works, at least on the Hitman: World of Assassination game getting it to work entirely offline (but the game thinks you are online because of the Peacock server). but generally speaking I would stick with the GE runner made for Lutris since that will likely be fine for a high percentage of games in my estimations. I did get it working on the more standard Lutris GE runner, but I had to allow the ‘mono’ to install (otherwise ‘PeacockPatcher.exe’ won’t start up on) as I normally just cancel out of that etc etc.

but I am currently using a ‘.bat’ file to start up the Hitman game through Lutris etc since it automates starting the peacock server/peacockpatcher exe/game into a single file. so you just start the game through the Lutris shortcut in Lutris and then play (after initial setup of server port (I switched mine since the default port of 80 does not seem to work on Linux) and putting that port into Peacock Patcher (127.0.0.1:XXXX (where XXXX is the port you are using)) etc, which I won’t get into for now).

side note: that same Hitman game even works on Heroic Games Launcher (I ran from “.AppImage”), which uses those but that’s more bloated vs Lutris as it uses more RAM, but I suspect that’s a little more beginner friendly than Lutris (I did not test RDR2 build 1436.28 on it but I have no reason to think it won’t work). but apparently this Heroic Games Launcher sees my currently installed ‘GE-Proton8-15’ (the ‘Steam’ GE version) (and the regular standard ones to) from Lutris and this does not seem to have any issues creating fresh wine prefix data with that same ‘Steam’ version of the GE runner, which it stores it’s prefix data by default in ones Home directory in the ‘Games’ etc folder.

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Hey, thanks for the additional information!

I actually did get the ‘Activation Error’ a few days after getting the game running. I was using the RDR2.exe to start the game and someone on reddit recommended using Launcher.exe instead. At first Launcher.exe didn’t work either, so I just re-copied the game files to overwrite the files and it worked again.

I think the RDR2.exe or Launcher.exe may be phoning home and getting disabled by RockStar. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to stop an individual application running in Wine from accessing the internet on a Steam Deck with the stock SteamOS. Even if I install apps through Pacman and implement some firewall rules, they’ll just be overwritten with the next update.

I’m using the InsaneRamZes 1436.28 Direct Play version. Do you have any ideas about blocking internet access for RDR2.exe or the “Activation Error?”

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I would argue that’s not likely given if it was, it seems like pretty much everyone would have that problem, but they don’t.

because I have many hours on RDR2 and I have not experience that ‘Activation Error’ even a single time.

but in regards to Reddit posts with the ‘Activation Error’, just search ‘rdr2 activation error reddit’ and you will get a fair amount of topics on it to read. but the gist of it is putting a heavy load on the CPU (which people use a variety of means to do this) and then trying to start the game as that has worked for some, but not for everyone. even the officially bought game can experience that issue, so it’s not exclusive to the cracked copy.

1 Like
9

Thanks for the insight. I’ll research on Reddit a bit more, I’ve been using Lemmy as much as possible to avoid Reddit. The Linux community there is thriving in particular, we could use more people like you in the LinuxCrackSupport community, so please consider joining us there if you haven’t already.

10

UPDATE: I just figured out a bit more in relation to that ‘vulkan-1 (native)’ entry I mentioned above that stopped the game (build 1436.28) from working.

there is a mod over on Nexus Mods (i.e. FSR2RDR2 at Red Dead Redemption 2 Nexus - Mods and community ) that comes with a ‘vulkan-1.dll’ file and once I used that, I re-added the ‘vulkan-1 (native)’ entry back in the ‘Wine Configuration’ on RDR2.exe in ‘Libraries’ tab and then when I start build 1436.28 it no longer has issues and the game starts up like expected where as before it would just flat out not start up.

NOTE: that particular FSR 2 mod specifically says, “General purpose FSR2 drop-in for DLSS2 Built for 472.12 standard driver compatibility & the 900/1000 series.” and “AMD & INTEL GPU require the optional files and the ASI plugin loader”.

I got a Geforce 1050 Ti 4GB (currently with NVIDIA v525 driver) so I did not have to use the optional files/ASI loader to get that mod working. but if you got a typical AMD GPU variation etc, apparently you will need the optional files/ASI loader for that to mod to work.

so basically if you use that FSR 2 mod linked there you don’t have to worry about removing the ‘vulkan-1 (native)’ entry on GE runners from 8-13 and newer :slight_smile: