gta trilogy – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Rockstar Releases Same Buggy, Broken ‘GTA Trilogy’ Game To Steam… But On Sale!

from the well-that's-one-solution dept

Over a year ago, we discussed an annoying and strange set of actions taken by Rockstar and Take2, the companies behind the popular Grand Theft Auto series of games. Two actions were taken in sequence by those companies that were clearly related. First was that they worked to get a fan-made GTA 4 mod taken down, after learning that the mod essentially brought the cities and some of the gameplay from previous GTA games into GTA 4. Shortly after that was done, Rockstar released GTA Trilogy, which was a re-release bundle of those same older games the mod was incorporating. The problem is that GTA Trilogy was such a broken mess that the company had to pull the games out of online stores almost immediately. The launcher for the game was broken, the games were buggy as hell, and so on.

So why are we talking about this again? Well, GTA Trilogy is getting released again, on Steam first. But if you thought the bugs had been worked out and all is well with the title… LOL, no. Instead, a buggy version is being released again as is, but this time on sale!

Today, after some leaks and rumors, Rockstar Games released Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – Definitive Edition on Steam. The good news: It’s on sale, meaning you can grab all three classic games for cheap. The bad news: It’s the same infamously messy remaster that hasn’t received a substantial update since nearly a year ago. As you might expect, folks ain’t too happy about the situation.

Rockstar ultimately had to apologize to the community because the remasters were so awful. Eventually, Rockstar and Grove Street Games did fix some of the problems players had cataloged online. But the last major update for the game was in February 2022. Since then, the remastered trilogy has remained in a fairly rough state. So it doesn’t seem like the best time to release it on a new platform and yet, here we are.

$30 for three games really should sound like a good deal. But the public fully knows how buggy these games are and it’s completely tone-deaf to release those buggy games with the only give-back being a discount on price. And if you want to speculate that Rockstar has some patch in the works to un-break the games, keep in mind that the trilogy has been off the market for over a year now. There was plenty of time to fix the title before re-releasing it. I also imagine that buyers would prefer to have a completely working game rather than a discount on a broken one.

While some hold out hope that Rockstar will still swoop in, patch these games up and fix all the visual bugs and other problems, that seems more unlikely after today. Instead, it seems this is as good as things are going to get. Not to mention that Rockstar has plans to release these games on the Epic Store later this month, too. It does seem as if the time to fix GTA III, Vice City, and San Andreas has run out and Rockstar is ready to move on. What a shame.

It’s not just a shame; I struggle to understand how this move makes any sense at all. Discount or no, the release of a buggy game is going to get Rockstar absolutely murdered in terms of customer responses to this whole situation. It’s making the mistake it made over a year ago all over again, but telling the public to be satisfied with a discount on the game.

As they say, when you’re in a hole, the first step is to stop digging.

Filed Under: bugs, gta, gta trilogy, steam, video games
Companies: rockstar games, take 2, valve

Rockstar's GTA Retro Games Was Completely Broken And Support Was Ghosting Everyone

from the more-like-grand-theft-notto-amirite? dept

You may recall that a couple of months ago we discussed Rockstar and Take2, the game studio and publisher behind the Grand Theft Auto series, taking down a fan-made GTA4 mod that aimed to put all of the cities from previous games in one massive map. While this was a labor of love by dedicated fans of the GTA series, it escaped nobody’s attention that this action was taken on a mod started in 2014 just as Rockstar was about to release GTA Trilogy, consisting of remastered versions of GTA3, Vice City, and San Andreas. The very cities the mod looked to input into GTA4. In other words, the fan project was only shut down when the game companies decided to try to make money off this retro love themselves.

So how’s it going? Well, not too fucking great on the PC side considering that the PC version was pulled down basically everywhere.

Something has gone very, very wrong since yesterday’s launch of GTA Trilogy on PC. As of last night, all mention of a PC version has been removed from Rockstar’s own site, and the Rockstar Games Launcher app has gone completely offline. Anyone who bought the remastered collection before it vanished is currently unable to play.

It has been at least 18 hours since the sudden disappearance of the PC’s GTA Trilogy, and Kotaku can confirm that the Launcher is not working. Which means all Rockstar PC games, including Red Dead Redemption 2 and GTA Online, are currently impossible to play.

You read that right. The PC Rockstar Launcher, responsible for letting gamers play the games they bought, was borked. On Twitter, Rockstar’s support had only been so transparent as to say that the launcher is down due to “maintenance”. Unscheduled or unannounced maintenance, as it turns out. And maintenance that lasted several days. Now, you could get the launcher to work in offline mode… for those who know how to do that. But paying customers were left to figure it out for themselves because Rockstar’s support only sent two tweets out during that downtime with barely any details.

As of Monday, Rockstar finally got its launcher working again and the GTA Trilogy back to being available for purchase and play. But as to what caused all of this, Rockstar is as opaque as ever. Whether something related to the GTA Trilogy title is somehow related to all of this isn’t entirely known…

…but it is the case that people recently bought those titles and couldn’t play them. Bad communication from the company to the public is compounding, at least in this writer’s head, with the effort it put into shutting down a fan-made work and labor of love that would have given GTA fans some retro thrills.

And to make matters a bit stranger, Rockstar had previously delisted its PC version from all 3rd party marketplaces.

For whatever reasons, Rockstar chose to remove all versions of GTAs III, Vice City, and San Andreas from alternative PC stores—including Steam—ahead of this launch, meaning its bespoke software is now the only way to buy and play the games. Or indeed, the only way to not play it.

And so Rockstar customers were left to the tender mercies of a company that doesn’t seem to feel like telling them what’s going on. All while trying to prevent fan-made game mods from being a thing. Not a great look.

Filed Under: availability, broken, customer support, gta, gta trilogy, video games
Companies: rockstar games