Rockstar is a company that, for the most part, has enjoyed near constant success and extraordinary sales. As you're no doubt aware, though, the recent launch of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition was met with plenty of criticism, which will have no doubt been bruising for Rockstar and the development team at Grove Street Games.
Rockstar has now published a 'note from the Rockstar Games team' addressing the criticism and apologising for the project's issues. It suggests there'll be a roadmap of multiple updates to bring the games up to a higher level of quality, with the first expected in the coming days for 'all versions' of the game.
Firstly, we want to sincerely apologize to everyone who has encountered issues playing these games.
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. 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.
A new Title Update is on the way in the coming days for all versions of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition that will address a number of issues. We will update everyone as soon as it is live.
Hopefully the first patch will address some of the worst issues, such as game crashes, failed mission progressions and perhaps the deeply unpopular 'rain' effect, but we'll see what the patch notes reveal. In terms of the Switch version we were very critical of its performance in our review, while initial Digital Foundry analysis described the Switch port as 'a big mess'.
Rockstar's update also walks back on the previous removal of the original versions of the game, to an extent. The original PC versions will return for sale on the Rockstar Store as a bundle, and those that own the remastered trilogy via that store's launcher will get the bundle for free (through June 30, 2022). There's no suggestion that the original versions will return for sale on other storefronts, however.
In addition Rockstar has requested that players remain courteous and constructive in their feedback, as it highlights that members of the development team have been harassed online.
In the meantime, it pains us to mention that we are hearing reports of members of the development teams being harassed on social media. We would kindly ask our community to please maintain a respectful and civil discourse around this release as we work through these issues.
It'll be interesting to see how the first update shapes up, though of course more substantial improvements will likely need more work and time. Here's hoping that the Switch version gets a major boost in the coming days and weeks.
[source rockstargames.com]
Comments 98
Being mean to individual developers is terrible, yes.
Rockstar the organization and management is bad, I work in software and I’m sure that nobody was PROUD of the bad project, regardless of if they were l*zy or not
Throw me a free copy of the Liberty City and Vice City Stories collection, then I’ll forgive you 😝
They should use a yellow background for this great news!
@GannonBanned project management and R* wanting to rush it out. The developers probably couldn’t keep up on it
Perfectly in time for my physical version arriving I hope.
Why am I just imagining them throwing the F-word around a crap ton behind the scenes in having to deal with 'annoying fans' or something?
The harassing fans are annoying though and these people should be handled. Harassing people is not going to help anyone.
They better delay the physical release then
If they fix all the major issues, I'll consider picking this up.. but all my excitement I had from back when it was announced is gone. I miss the days when companies actually cared about quality before release
@Juanblue85 : Unlikely. The carts are likely already on hand and Rockstar have been cutting enough corners in the development of these so-called “definitive” editions. They certainly won’t be tossing out hundreds of thousands if not a million or two discs/cartridges.
It feels like a lot of these companies have this sort of statement ready to go before launch, well aware that their product isn't really ready for market when they release. I'm sure people at the top decided to release like this and have patches instead of holding off until the game was ready.
Absolute success corrupts absolutely.
Looking forward to my cadre of commenters that'll be like "Rockstar CAVES to unhinged internet mob" and how there were no technical issues to apologize for. Where y'all at.
Rockstar: “We were lazy and shipped out an inferior product with little to no testing or QA. Since it’s become the norm nowadays we can always patch the product so it’s not really a big deal.”
“And the physical will still require a download to even play even though we are a multi million dollar company and can spend the additional 10 cents to get 32gb carts.”
Man, it's becoming common practice to release something, have everyone complain and then the developers have to apologise and let us know they'll fix it. Are they so out of tune with what folk expect. There is much to hate with this digital age without people letting it encourage them to become slack and lower their standards. There is no way the games could mean as much to them as fans. Any fan overseeing the project would have screamed 'wth is this!?'
I'm not into GTA and have to lean towards the opinions of folk who are and they were not respected at all here. Slapped in the face, even. It's fine to be mindful of your bottom line, but companies get so big, they can't take their eyes off it to see what they are shovelling.
Well at least they are aware that they f'd up.
That said the game should NOT have released in such a state. Are game/quality testers no longer a thing in this industry?
@tedinthepaint be careful what you wish for, fanhead.😏
@GannonBanned What were we supposed to do, take it like a man and accept the games' release in its current state? We shouldn't have to take games being released in a half-baked state.
hey when you release a game in a busted ass state but fix it to being polished and playable I won't complain at picking it up 60% off
@GameOtaku always remember that USBs aren’t two sided because it was a fraction of a penny cheaper.
All games could be physical if profit didn’t exceed experience to shareholders
@mikegamer lmao no complain, boycott, refund away.
I will never defend a poor product destroyed by greed and corporate indifference
they ok GTA Trilogy in the state its in knowing it wasn't ready
@GannonBanned It sounded like you were against it. My bad.
What’s with developers hellbent on destroying their reputations lately?!
Courtesy, huh? Puts on monocle and top hat This release was absolute rubbish, I say!
If you REALLY gave a crap about your MOST VALUABLE IP you wouldn't have launched it in such a horrendous shoody state.
Take 2 needs to be reprimanded for such incompetence mishandling of a multi BILLION dollar brand.
Why didn’t rockstar themselves do this? Why release in this state? Why didn’t more people work on these games? How can u fudge 20 year old games. Rockstar has all the cash in the world. Xxxxx would love to see a documentary on this release xxx
They have investors to please who don’t care what state the games are in, especially when they can be patched up and even be praised when they fix things (see No Man’s Sky). Rockstar knew full well what the situation would be
The least they can do at this point is get standard up to point and also as a good will give us the two story expansions for free.
Make it so
Too little.... and way too late.
I don't even know if they can fix it. These games are based on the mobile ports, not the originals. So, the foundation is kind of crap anyway.
@progx well if they agree on the poor quality, why did they allow releasing it in such poor state! Today it’s just about money, no quality, loyalty, or respect to fans!!!!! It’s too late to apologize, they knew all along-that’s why they decided to release physical version in December! This is a crime! Intentionally forcing people to buy ***** versions of those great games, just to test the market-obviously they wanted to pour as little resources into it as possible so they ignorantly just tapped the market this way and based on the results they would make adaptations to physical release- that’s a criminal practice- like selling alcohol that made people go blind, fixing it t later. No! If something gets released, it must be released with a set standard! Rockstar higher management is cheap pieces of bull****, for sacrificing the games reputation for the sake of money, while betraying the trust of loyal fans! This won’t be forgotten, and Rockstar failed big time with this step!
They knew the state of the games as they released yet still released them just so they could meet the Christmas shopping season.
Well done for taking the star out of rockstar…
There is absolutely no way these issues were "unexpected" to anyone who worked on these remasters.
@westman98 exactly! That’s why they didn’t release physical right away. They knew it and still released it. They should compensate the fans severely for this for even daring to commit this.
I watched the entire Digital Foundry tech analysis of this trilogy release, which compares all aspects of the games across all the platforms on which it released.
GOOD LUCK getting the switch version anywhere near the level of quality it deserves.
Well, at least they’ve finally gone on record, I suppose. While I’m just as angry as anyone else, I certainly would not condone fans being vile or harassing the Grove Street devs – no matter how much they probably deserve it.
Ah yes, “unexpected technical issues”. So why didn’t you send out any review copies or show any gameplay footage again?
@The_Pixel_King I’m curious what you mean by “no matter how much they probably deserve it”?
@mikegamer oh heck no, solidarity forever, this is a Rockstar management issue I just want all attacks focused at the top of the pyramid
Stop selling the same until it’s fixed then, you absolute jerks.
As everyone has already said, selling it in this condition was absolutely intentional to get the game out ahead of the Christmas season.
@ThomasBW84 both links lead to the same site
In terms of the Switch version we were very critical of its performance in our review, while initial Digital Foundry analysis described the Switch port as 'a big mess'.
Cool, good on them for taking responsibility.
Side note, but is anyone else getting this awful Frozen ad that fills up the whole screen lately? Making it so that I can hardly use the site these past few days
It's not like they weren't aware of the issues before they shipped it out. Rockstar knew what they were doing.
I get they want the Christmas cash, but in the long run Take Two, EA, Activision, CD Projekt Red, Bethesda, Warner, and Ubisoft are destroying customers trust in Western video games where their day one sales are going to suffer. Yes, this tech is difficult, but you can’t put prices up and release unfinished games. If you go to a restaurant and your food arrives uncooked, you never go back to that restaurant. Customer satisfaction will do you better in the long run over hitting street dates.
@MrGawain I feel like it makes sense that this should be true, but it’s been happening for so long without consequence that publishers can just reasonably assume that people are suckers.
Chop the price 50% as well.
Ahh the good old "release broken games and fix them once we've counted our money" stance. Seems to be quite the industry leading way to go these days!
Ok that's a start. At least Rockstar acknowledges their mess and is promising to pick it up. Let's see how these patches improve the switch version. I might even buy it if the quality ends up being acceptable.
Harassing individuals on social media is unacceptable though.
@YusseiWarrior3000 I have to assume that's all sarcasm..or do people actually throw money at undeserving things proven to not be worth it? Oh wait...they do...that's why we only get remasters/remakes now...shame..
But would they have patched this stuff if people didn’t make a stink…. ?
I’ll reassess my choice to not buy when I see the patches in place.
For anyone who hasn't studied modern business strategies, in the last 3 or 4 years a very common lesson has been to remain in the spotlight by any means necessary, in other words "any news is good news", because as society becomes more ADHD every year your organic window of free advertising from the press lessens in selling power. EVERY company is looking at methods, and one you see every so often is putting out something so sub-par that everyone and their dog is vlogging about it. "hate watching" is real and it's powerful and it doesn't harm the brand like you think it might, in fact quite the opposite, as now millions of people who wouldn't have thought about your product before suddenly know everything about it. Think the Sonic movie, or countless other recent examples (some have wondered if the new Halo is an example, and I don't think it is, I think that was genuine incompetence, same possibly goes for Cyberpunk though I do wonder if they tried it and it backfired). This release, though, I have no doubt in my mind.
@larryisaman I was late to No Man's Sky so take my opinion how you want but they have released so much content for so long without any extra pennies required.
Seem pretty cool in my book.
Yes, the QA was terrible on this release but the bugs I've seen didn't seem game breaking, to be honest. It kinda added some fun to the sandbox.
They apologize after they took your money
Maybe they should of reviewed internally their strategy and avoided de-listing the originals and building games based on mobile ports.
You would think from one of the wealthiest game companies in existence would treat the "definitive" version of some of their most iconic games a bit more seriously...
@GannonBanned
But we are talking about a AAA series with a massive pedigree. If they had done it right it would have sold very well. But let’s be real here at MSRP pricing they are already making pretty fine profit.
@GameOtaku lmao no I agree with you - I was lamenting - I love that tweet that was like “I want shorter uglier games where programmers are paid more and I’m not kidding”
@Hwatt i honestly doubt they managed to take that much money to begin with, the review embargo they had in place when the games had literally been released was a blimp sized red flag, i for one backed out then, holding off for physical now.
But i know many people didn't get the games because of the initial red flags, then it started to become clear they are a mess.
I think if these remakes even managed 2m sales they probably would have ignored the noise and ran with the money.
I doubt they even sold 1m between all systems.
Rockstar has a lot of work to do for me to consider buying this. Patched up very well and a good price cut will gain my interest.
I guess they had to get a product out for the Christmas market regardless of quality just like Cyberpunk last year.
I was excited by the trailer released for this game it looked so good. Glad I waited for reviews now though. I buy only a select few games at release these days due to the buggy messes that come out. I agree with a lot of people here this idea of “we’ll patch it later” has to stop being normalised by developers I don’t think it’s fair to customers.
It also makes me worry that in few years time when servers are down it will make replaying these games an issue if they can’t access patches… I know it’s not an issue know however I still play games and systems which are decades old and wonder about that kind of thing.
And that line about developers being harassed just seems like a good way of getting some of the heat off their actions rather than just giving a sincere apology not that I think anyone should be harassed.
Multiple patches... Where have I heard that before...? Oh that's right, Sonic Colors Ultimate was supposed to get multiple patches to address the issues people were bringing up about that game. I only remember hearing about one though, did any other ones come out? I'm actually dying to know!
"The updated versions of these classic games did not launch in a state that meets our own standards of quality"
Then why did you launch them in this state then? There used to be a thing called QA testing. If only you tried that first, then you may have been able to get the games up to your obviously high standards. /s
Edit: @Slowdive Snap!
@Yosher
Yup, I've always been more a 'speak with your wallet' guy myself. Was going to buy this collection but the morons running the show wanted it rushed out the door and we got a bad product because of that. I know it's difficult for people not to buy something they've looked forward to but the only way these companies learn is if they see sinking profit.
And I will be purchasing once it reaches a level of completion that will warrant whatever sale price I find it in a few months.
Apology is useless, how about refund to all the people who bought it? take down the game from digital store, bring it back when the game is perfect.
@GannonBanned
Ah sorry I misinterpreted your comment.
Hopefully by the time the physical launches they could fix this. Digital Foundry definitely will be interested with these updates
This is just another example that QA got largely ignored and rushed to make a deadline.
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@tka060681 no thanks I’d rather they keep the game up I’m enjoying burglaries in San Andreas lol
@Gamer83 out of the all the comments this is the one that makes sense, companies pushing a product out too early for the cash and the developers shouldn’t be bullied for it they’re not making the rules
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@GameOtaku oh gosh it’s fine, sorry I didn’t speak clearly
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This was always gonna launch a mess and get reworked. Just the method these days. I'd like to have Vice City on the go but I'm not sure how much rose tint it has in my mind.
Frame rate, draw distance, severe pop-in...
Oh yeah... I really hope the "Demolition Man" mission in Vice City is fixed. I thought when the building was being blown up that so was my Switch. I was laughing out loud as it was handled even worse than what I remembered on PS2. 🤣
What a clown statement. These companies are like politicians. I'm not buying this trash.
They should have just released the originals on the Switch in physical.
They should not have pulled the originals off of digital storefronts like Steam.
They should not have attached DRM when booting these games.
Again, total clown show from a company that should be running a casino instead.
My thanks to Rockstar for keeping my non-purchase this time regret-free.
Were all 3 games in decent condition and - oh yeah - actually ON the cartridge, I and probably a half million others would have preordered the physical version by now.
Let’s focus more on delivering a quality product and less on short-term profits and careful apologies, hmm?
Oh, it was up to their $tandar$. If they had any real standards, they would not have released it in that state at all. This is not a believable apology.
In the meantime, it pains us to mention that we are hearing reports of members of the development teams being harassed on social media.
Don't look over there dear customers, look over here instead.
how about getting some of that music back...
Welcome to CyberHell 2077.
It'll be fixed someday.....
Let's hope that Nintendo Switch version gets proper updates and doesn't get treated like an afterthought.
Carts already in production, if indeed the physical version was supposed to launch a month later.
what we hope will happen and never will: Physical delayed, updated build including all fixes in cart, complete games.
what will happen: GTA3 on cart + a 17 gb download + a relatively modest extra download for bugs and fixes.
@Grandiajet Yeah, I strongly suspect they just put it out in this state because they wanted it out there for the holidays. Greed can be very bad. What a shame that these games finally get ported to a Nintendo console and this is what we get.
@Gamer_Zeus
The fact that they sold any copies is disgusting. That is my point. This should not have been released, let alone ported from mobile for UE4…
@Silly_G exactly. And the physical releases require a download anyway rendering the whole 'physical' aspect of it completely redundant.
@fusermarucs : Not exactly. So long as you have at least one other Switch console with the update data installed, you can transfer it wirelessly between consoles, so, there is a workaround for when the servers are terminated.
With that said though, I don't think that excuses publishers from using cheaper cartridges or pressing unfinished builds to disc/cart. Patches should be the exception, not the rule, and yet most major games these days have day one patches, which is frankly pathetic. To put matters into perspective, only a tiny, tiny few Wii/DS games were ever recalled or patched. The convenience of patches have made publishers much too complacent.
@Silly_G well yes, but to me, the point of a physical cartridge is that you put it in your system, and can play the whole game with no bother. GTA trilogy on Switch won't actually contact the whole trilogy and is therefore pointless as an 'I must have the physical version' item. Especially as there won't be a manual or maps either!
@fusermarucs : Of course. I am not defending the practice, and I don't intend to grab this either. Rockstar have screwed this up badly enough without withholding a good chunk of the package from the cartridge.
@Clcl9898 what do you mean?
Well, these issues should have never happened in the first place, but at least they are handling them. I don't think anyone doubted that they would fix them after the massive negative backlash that this trilogy received when it first launched. Issues like this should have never happened in the first place either. Whatever happened to releasing a game in it's full complete unbuggy state at launch? And a remastered trilogy no less. This isn't even a new release, even if it does utilize a new engine that the old trilogy of games didn't. I understand the issues with reworking games with a new engine. Problems always arise. Maybe this remaster should have just had more time in the oven before shoving it out the door.
@GannonBanned just ignore that guy. That profile was made yesterday and he's clearly here just to irritate people.
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@Jimmy_G_Buckets oh I JUST realized he meant my picture haha - I thought he meant my leftist videogame utopian dreams
"The games will reach the level of quality that they deserve to be..."
"...and then be released" is unfortunately not the end to that sentence.
Grovestreet games deserves the hate for prioritizing on diversity by outsourcing a big chunk of the work to India.
@Znake I agree. However, it won’t be forgotten on the other systems. PC and Nintendo fans might be more visceral, but PS and Xbox fans will overlook it in the future. Your average consumer will definitely overlook it too. All you can do is make noise, take videos and post. For everyone of us that complains, there will be 10-15 people that won’t say anything.
@KayFiOS one just came out today, in fact
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