Today, Rockstar Games released a statement where the publisher apologizes for the various technical and visual issues players have documented in the recently released Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - Definitive Edition. More importantly, Rockstar is promising updates to fix these issues. The publisher also announced that it will be bringing back the previously delisted classic versions of the GTA Trilogy on PC via its own Rockstar Store and owners of the remastered games will get these returning classic GTA titles for free.
The remastered GTA Trilogy launched on November 11 and shortly after that, social media was filled with complaints from players who discovered missing fog, broken rain, ugly character models, new and old glitches, and more. The games are also prone to crashing and on Switch, players have reported poor performance and stability.
“The Grand Theft Auto series — and the games that make up this iconic trilogy — are as special to us as we know they are to fans around the world,” explained Rockstar in its statement. “The updated versions of these classic games did not launch in a state that meets our own standards of quality, or the standards our fans have come to expect.”
“We have ongoing plans to address the technical issues and to improve each game going forward. With each planned update, the games will reach the level of quality that they deserve to be.”
To seemingly make up for the botched launch and buggy games, Rockstar announced that it is bringing back the classic versions of GTA III, Vice City and San Andreas via its own Rockstar Games Store.
According to the publisher, these classic games will return in a bundle soon and anyone who owns the new remastered trilogy on PC via Rockstar’s store will receive these classic games for free automatically. This deal will go on until June 2022. Back in October, Rockstar pulled the original versions of these popular GTA games from digital storefronts with little warning.
It should be noted these new versions of the game, built using the Unreal engine, were developed by Grove Street Games, not Rockstar. In its statement, Rockstar asked its fans to stop harassing the devs behind these new remasters.
In its statement, Rockstar also said a new update for the trilogy is coming soon that will “address a number of issues” players have with the remastered collection.
The launch of these remastered games has been a giant mess. When the trilogy launched, PC players were locked out of playing the remastered titles for days as Rockstar removed files that weren’t supposed to be in the game. It was believed by many that these files might have been a bunch of songs that Rockstar no longer had the licenses for but which were still hanging out in the remastered collection’s assets. Rockstar hasn’t confirmed what was removed or why since bringing that games back to PC after the delay.