I know a lot of people expressed a desire to get the game for the offline and were put off by the anti-cheat. There's also been reports of crashes and bluescreens attributed to anti-cheat being overly temperamental. I can personally confirm I experiences a bluescreen due to a kernel error while playing, so I have to think it's true.

The game however does not actually require EasyAntiCheat to launch or run - it only needs them to access the online features like multiplayer or cross-saves. So, if you're having issues launching the game, have lost your save file, are experiencing crashes, or just don't want EAC on your PC here's how to bypass, disable, remove, and block it from automatically reinstalling - without losing your save data.

Edit: I've confirmed you can connect to the internet to receive gift codes even if you disable the online features.

This guide involves using the command prompt and editing the registry. If you follow the steps as written you'll be fine, but if anything gets messed up you assume responsibility for fiddling with your own computer's brain.

Edit: I've done some more messing with the save files and have found a way to consistently manipulate them for easy backups and multiple save files without data loss.

First you’ll wanna go ahead and back up these locations just to be safe:

Save Data here

Create a new folder to backup both the remote folder and the remotecache.vdf. Copy paste the files, do not drag and drop, as this can cause the game to lose track of your save.

You need the remotecache.vdf for the game to recognize the save in your /remote folder, if this file goes missing or is moved at all the game will prompt you to start a new save, even if there is a current save file in the remote folder. If this happens, back up the 002DAE74-00-gamedata.bin you want to recover - then start a new a new file. Play until you you can save and quit, to generate a new remotecache.vdf then overwrite the newly generated 002DAE74-00-gamedata.bin in the /remote with the the one you previously backed up - it should launch your original save just fine. If you want to use the second save file, you can back it up as well before over writing it, allowing you to have as many save files you want.

Next open up the game folder

You will see a file called GameBootstrapper.ini
Open this in anything, notepad's fine. Go to the top line and replace
with
or if that doesn't work try

NOTE: YOU'LL HAVE TO RE-DO THIS PART AFTER AN UPDATE

Go ahead and launch the game, make sure it starts and your save works before doing anything nuts. It should completely skip launching EAC and go straight into the title screen.

If you experience(d) any save game loss, please read this: you can launch the game directly from either of these executables on their own, bypassing the anti-cheat without editing anything, but launching them manually for some reason makes them unable to locate the game's default save location - which makes it appear as though your save might have been lost or deleted - do not panic! It's probably fine so long as you have not started a new save yet! The reason we're bothering to edit these files is so we can continue to launch it through steam and prevent any save data loss/misplacement. Still it's best practice to always make a backup just in case!

If you still have any problems getting it to launch or recognize an existing save; double-check your spelling and formatting in the GameBootstrapper.ini config, make sure your gamedata is in the "Steam\userdata\[Your ID]\2993780\remote"folder, possibly try adding the '-dx11' or '-safe' commands to your launch options (right click the game > properties > general > launch options), if all else fails back everything up, validate your game files, and start back at step one. If none of that works then I simply cannot help, may Gaben have mercy on your soul.

Once the bypass is set up you can remove the EasyAntiCheat software from your PC and still launch the game without any problems. However you will not be able to access any of the online features such as multiplayer or cross-saves. If you want to use either of these, you need to re-enable EasyAntiCheat.

If you're never gonna go online though and want to purge all trances of EAC from your computer follow these steps:

Press Windows + R and run the command ‘cmd’ to open the command prompt and copy/paste this

This will reset and disable EAC, but if we want to completely remove all traces we also need to delete it from the registry.

Window + R and run ‘regedit’

Open the Registry Editor

Find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and navigate to

SYSTEM > CurrentControlSet > Services >EasyAntiCheat.reg
SYSTEM > CurrentControlSet > Services >EasyAntiCheat_EOS.reg

Delete those entries to successfully purge your system. You wanna go through cleaning up and deleting any other leftover junk files or folders related to it - and you're done! Reboot and there should be no trace of EAC and your game should launch fine and retain all your save info.

After an update the game will automatically redownload any missing files related to Epic Services or EasyAntiCheat, as well as reset your GameBootstrapper.ini file back to default. You will need to re-do the bypass after every update (so far this has been the case at least). If you try to launch the game after unintalling EAC but forget to reconfigure the ini, this will prompt EAC to reinstall itself.

If you want to block EAC from automatically reinstalling itself due to a sudden update or accidental misclick, you can use the Windows AppLocker to deny them run permissions.

Windows + R and run 'secpol.msc'

Navigate to here:
Application Control Policies > AppLocker > Executable Rules

Right-click in the right area of the window and follow these steps

• Create New Rule
  
• Set action to 'deny' keep group Everybody
  
• Set type to File hash
  
• Add EACLauncher.exe and EasyAntiCheat_EOS_Setup.exe to rule
  
• Create

That should block them from running even if you open them and click all over them on purpose.