Grand Theft Auto V offline mode disabled by new Rockstar launcher

[Andytizer 269]

Reports on reddit show that the latest update to Grand Theft Auto V on Steam has disabled the ability for players to play offline, even in singleplayer mode.

According to Rockstar Games support page, this is an unintentional bug:

Quote

Question: Why can’t I set my GTAV to Offline Mode now that I have updated to the Rockstar Games Launcher?

Answer: We are aware of an issue that is affecting some players' ability to play in Offline Mode and we are currently looking into it.

This issue has been interpreted as a way of forcing an always-on DRM onto the game. We look forward to seeing a timely update which fixes this issue. 

The changes coincide with the launch of Rockstar Games Launcher, now a required part of installing Grand Theft Auto V on Steam. The new launcher includes a number of dependencies that need to also be installed:

[AlexKVideos1 22]

I wonder if this is also in an effort to stop modders, because the launcher also warns you if it finds modified or added files in GTA 5.

[Luigi master89 13]

Man this sucks.  Bethesda and Rockstar have the monopoly on games with mod support, but Rockstar will do anything to prevent people from modding them.  At least their games are good enough without depending on mods, unlike Bethesda.

[AmethystViper 2]

Yeah but it's still sad that Rockstar are never going get over themselves for what happened with the "Hot Coffee" incident if they're spending this much effort to try and stop modders from even modding their games.