Probably temporarily, but who's to say.

Rockstar has pulled Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition from sale on PC.

This week the PC version launched exclusively on the Rockstar Games Launcher, which then suffered significant issues that made the game unplayable.

At the time of this article's publication, the PC version of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition is unavailable to buy on Rockstar's website. Meanwhile, the Rockstar Games Launcher remains offline.

Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition is available to buy on PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch, however.

It sounds like it's more an issue with the launcher than the game itself but the reception to the game has been...mostly bad? Any of you playing it?

I purchased on PS5 as I own all the originals on PC and with MODS you can upgrade those anyway.. It certainly does have frame drops, artificating, and last but not least crashes like every two hours or so. In performance mode it runs OKAY enough to play normally and I have still been having a good time with it.

I've been playing it on Xbone (mostly III and VC) and I like it a lot but I'm also a die-hard fan of these games so *shrug* I understand the frustration with it being a mobile port but these are still the best versions of these games so far IMO. And there may have been some misinfo re: what songs were left off because I saw an article listing several songs that were in fact on the soundtrack for Vice City. The shooting is still wonky but for III and VC leagues better than what it was originally and the graphics look slick despite some of the rougher edges people have pointed out. Is it worth 60 bones as it stands right now? Probably not, unless you're a GTA sicko like me. I grew up on these games so they have a special place in my heart <3

I heard that San Andreas was going to make its way to PC gamepass, just holding out for that to try it out.

I got it on the switch for mostly San Andreas and VC. It is terrible and is making me consider emulation.

I'm glad footage of this game started hitting mid-afternoon Wednesday and I got to see it for myself. I own the original trilogy which are still available to download from PSN for now, and while they play like a ton of bricks they feel authentic to my memory of them (and have all the music).

There's a novelty to the lighting system and modernized controls, but for me when seeing it in motion over an extended period of time there's an uncanny valley effect I just can't get past. Shadow of the Colossus' remaster tip-toed along this cliff but these leap right into the chasm.

And then there's stuff like this

That reminds me of the Silent Hill 2 remaster, which weirdly removed all the grit and fog that made that game feel like it did and put this silly shiny coat over everything.

Not to mention the super comprehensive overview of things wrong, removed or straight up broken about these games right now over on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/qryxmt/rockstar_should_be_ashamed_of_the_gta_trilogy/ (I can't make a link in this post for whatever reason, but there's the URL...)

@nodima: That uncanny valley aspect was what pulled me away from it too. There's something about the lighting and reflections that does not gel well with 2004 models. It looks like a hacked together mod rather than something with the Rockstar name and logo on it.

You'd think they'd have enough people on staff to do this in-house.

I was just about to start playing Red Dead 2 for the first time but i can't get past the currently broken Rockstar Launcher, so that's cool.
Also they managed to ruin the look of those PS2 games, all they had to do was up-res it a bit, fix some bugs, add some quality of life features, the new art style looks awful.

I get the feeling they're probably removing it from the store because of those dataminers finding the "cut" music saved as OGG files in the directory, along with files that are basically the original game's data. I wouldn't doubt that when they come back on the store it'll be missing a couple of files.

I've played a little bit of San Andreas on Game Pass on Series S. It seemed fine to me. It did crash once when I was messing around with the garage door.

I still can't get over the fact that they needed to have separate quality and performance modes for these 20 year old games running on new systems like PS5 and XSX. Like, they honestly couldn't get these PS2 games to run at 60 FPS without compromises on a system that can runs games like Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart at a solid 60 FPS with ray tracing at like 1440p? That's not even getting into the fact that performance mode doesn't even hold a locked 60 FPS in these GTA remasters.

I can understand (though not excuse) how other issues like texture upscaling weirdness and vfx issues can happen, but I just don't get the performance problems at all. PS4 and Xbox One games that originally had an uncapped framerate will just run at 60 FPS through back compat on the new machines even without a specific patch to optimize them just by virtue of running on better hardware, but these games from 3 generations ago can't run smoothly? I just don't get it, these ports have to be just incredibly poorly coded.

@nodima: That image is so baffling. Like the original dudes might not look modern, but it's clear that these guys are tough dudes that you shouldn't mess with. It works. Their modern versions seem to have more detail to them. The eyes are there, you could actually make out what the tattoos are supposed to be and the bandana looks like thick fabric. But at the same time, these guys are the least threatening individuals i have ever seen. They straight up look like bumbling fools. To change the appearance of characters to such an extent that they don't really fit their original function any longer, that's a problem. They look like clay characters with facial hair attached to their face as if they went through a character creator from a game anno 2014. That hair looks like someone sprayed black paint on his head. Sigh, i guess it'll be a huge success from an ROI standpoint.

Ars Technica mentioned that the Switch version is pretty rotten. In the time the author was testing the three games, he had hard system crashes happen for each game. He also ran into situations where the framerate dropped into the teens and in general the framerate was inconsistent and poor. I also saw a video on Twitter of a person using a Switch in handheld mode driving in San Andreas and it was noticeably hitching and struggling to keep the framerate up.

I guess the Switch version at least has a leg up on the PC version in that it actually starts?

Well it's confirmed, it was taken off the Rockstar launcher on PC not because of the general terrible quality, but because is still had music files that weren't re-licensed in it.

https://twitter.com/RockstarSupport/status/1459311246789038089

One workaround for PC Game Pass users is to use the cloud to play San Andreas. I tried it earlier, with the disclaimer that I was running it over gigabit ethernet, and it ran pretty well. The driving controls are not as good as I hoped they would be compared to V but I'm not sure if some that might be tied to input lag from streaming it.

Oh dear, if I want this on PC, I rather wait for a couple more months before I may either buy GTA 3, Vice City or San Andreas.

Gotta say, for Rockstar to hold a classic like this hostage on their own launcher, only for it to take a dive hard enough that they have to pull it.. Probably not a conference builder for another Epic Games to happen any time soon. You'd think people would stop trying to splinter services by now.

Sad to see Rockstar join the ever growing list of companies that don’t care about their history. The state of this release shows that very little has been and will be learned from Cyberpunk.

I was just replaying the PC version of San Andreas (the original release), and I saw so much charm, detail and quality that is missing from these "definitive editions". The NPCs were actually interacting with eachother. You would see Grove Street Gang members walk up to random NPC females and start flirting with them. They would comment about them from across the street and then go talk to them, get rejected and go back to their boys across the street. When CJ's car would be parked to go handle some business, you would come back to the car and there'd be a random gang member leaned up on the side of CJ's car smoking a blunt. The little things! Aside from the missing fog that created an actual SA atmosphere, and made the world feel huge, there are visible heatwaves throughout the environment in the OG version. There was that watery effect when you would be swimming underwater. In this new version, those are gone. In this new version, NPC cars just randomly crash into everything, everywhere for no reason. NPCs will just walk into the middle of the street and get hit by cars, all the time. The dialog audio was actually crisp and pretty much uncompressed in the OG. These new versions have literally the worst, tinny, highly compressed versions of the audio I have ever heard. Grove Street Games can't give the excuse of not having the audio, because there is literally better audio RIGHT THERE in the PC version. The only problem with the original PC version is that there are no controller button prompts (it will say JOY4 instead of Y, or triangle, and that is unfortunate), and this won't be fixed since Rockstar Game Launcher does not allow mods because Rockstar don't give a fuck about their consumers any more, or updating/fixing broken and easily fixable things. Why they would allow a "definitive edition remaster" on their 20 year anniversary of GTA3 of all things to be based off of a shitty mobile port, badly redesigned pool and workout minigames, incongruent menu sounds, glitches, way too fast exploding cars, uninspired font types on all of the in-game advertisements and logos, typos, rain that it is impossible to see the fucking game through, unstable framerates, and on top of that not pay for the song licensing of these classic soundtracks when they are a FOUR BILLION DOLLAR COMPANY is inexcusable. I'm not just saying this to complain or be divisive. It is literally the bare minimum just to port the ORIGINAL version of the game, and they didn't even do that. They started from the much maligned mobile port, that after constant complaints from gamers FOR YEARS was NEVER FIXED. I don't have hope this game will ever get fixed to the way it should be. They just don't care. I would love for them to prove me wrong.

I'm going to use this venue to say that I've owned the android port of SA for a while and haven't gotten it to launch once on two separate phones.

So yeah I'm not particularly surprised that this is all on fire

Talking about GTA made me really want to play GTA3 so i looked into modding the original version to get high resolution widescreen and it was surprisingly easy, i absolutely adore this game, i should thank the definitive edition for making me install the original.

I got them on Steam while I could years ago, together with 1 & 2... just a shame they're removed from sale. If you can find them on reseller sites get 'em while you can... they'll no doubt be rising to Duke 3D Megaton levels of price in no time.

How they were able to enable the hot coffee mod in this remaster/remake after it was "removed" from the original just boggles my mind. Like how in the ever fuck does that even happen? I'm am just baffled how this company fucked this up so bad. Clearly there was absolutely no QA testing.

@mrgreenman: Yeah, ppl keep saying they left hot coffee in but has that been confirmed at all? I know ppl have shown screenshots of mp3s not playing in the game and dev notes. But I don't think I've seen any proof hot coffee is still in.

@mrgreenman: I'd be more surprised if it wasn't there, the history of GTA ports is one of low effort and care.
I don't blame Grove Street Games entirely for the end result, if Rockstar hired them to change all the graphics for three open world games on the cheap and gave them the source code for the mobile version then they got exactly what they paid for, but it does get easier to blame the studio when the CEO says he's "enjoying this unparalled level of scrutiny", which is about as tone deaf as you can get to the point where i just want to say yeah they are just a shitty mobile dev.

Great job, team. High fives and gold stars all around.

Link

So "definitive" they are giving out the old versions that they pulled from all the storefronts as a "sorry, our bad" for PC, but only on the Rockstar launcher. It looks like if you are on console you just have to hope they are going to fix this version up to an acceptable level, because you are not getting those old games back, "sorry".

feels very much like a half-assed apology for a half-assed update to these games, that they themselves apparently found to be not good enough, but still pushed out and sold anyway.