GTA V PC Preload Guide

GTA V on PC will launch on 17th April in India for the Retail version and 14th April for the digital version. Starting April 7, those who have pre-purchased the game from Rockstar or Steam will be able to preload the game before the launch. We earlier discussed about the best options in case you wanted to preorder the game. This guide will tell you all you need to know about preloading the game. There is little detail about other distributors, although key sellers like GreenManGaming have started distributing keys that redeem with either Rockstar or Steam.

The official thread for the preload can be found here.

You can check out our coverage of GTA V here.

Preload Guide

If you purchased the game from Rockstar Warehouse:

• Check your email. There would be two messages from the Rockstar Warehouse. One with a link to the Social Club Activation page. Other with a Rockstar Activation Code.
• You can enter your code on the Social Club Activation page and download the GTA V PC Setup Tool, which begins preloading the game.
• The download will finish and then display a countdown timer for when the game will become playable on April 14, 2015.

If you purchased the game from Steam:

• Click the “PRE-LOAD” button in the Steam client (Library->Grand Theft Auto V) and begin downloading the game.
• Your Rockstar Activation Code will automatically be entered and used when you launch the game for the first time.

If you purchased the game from a different retailer:

• Rest of the retailers are expected to detail their preload instructions via email, which would also contain the activation code and information on how to download the game.

One recommendation I would make is to try and download the game in one go. Especially on Steam which has an age long issue of resting downloads for no apparent reason. I personally have had this bug a couple of times, the most recent when I was trying to update Payday 2 with over 5Gb of total download size, only for the download to restart from 0 the next morning as I paused the download at 4 Gb before shutting down my PC for the night the night before.

How to transfer preload from one PC to another.

As you might notice the download size is about 60GB. This makes the digital download significantly harder in India where the “Fair usage limits” are so restrictive one might call them “unfair”. Most of the people I talked to have their internet capped at 50 GB. Downloading the game is no easy task. If you have friends with a better internet connection or if you have paid your ISP for extra download limit and want to help out your friends who are planing to join your online crime spree within the game. We provide you with a guide so you can also transfer the download from one PC to another. Since the Preload files are encrypted, you should ideally transfer the game folder after it has been decrypted by Steam, otherwise you will need some 130GB of free space for the game to be decrypted and installed. Decryption will also take some time.

Option 1 (Steam backup and restore, will work only after launch)

1. Once downloaded on one PC, Right click GtaV and select back up data.
2. Back it up onto a removable drive.
3. On the second PC, use the steam restore feature and restore the files from the drive.

Option 2 (Manually copy preload files and folder structure)

1. Stop Steam on both the PC’s
2. Copy all the files in the depotcache folder and the appmanifest.acf file on the first PC.
3. Paste them into the depotcache folder and the appmanifest.acf file in the steamapps folder on the second PC.
4. Start Steam
5. Navigate to game & click “Preload” button
6. Download progress window pops up and immediately says “download complete.”
7. Wait for launch.

How are you coping with the huge file size? Are you writing angry letters to your ISP for the pathetic download caps, begging your friend to help out or have you abandoned the idea for digital download and are going for a physical disc despite the delay in launch? The Box is rather thick with 7 glorious Dual Layer DVDs, but retail copies aren’t Steam redeemable. Let us know in the comments below.