PC gamers are now able to buy and play Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – Definitive Edition after the remastered collection’s calamitous launch last week. It all went Pete Tong with the Rockstar Games Launcher crumbling under player pressure last Thursday, and Rockstar having to remove the game from sale after unlicensed and unintended files were included in the download. Both issues have now been resolved.
Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition is again available through the Rockstar Games Launcher for play and purchase. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience, and are working to improve and update overall performance as we move forward: https://t.co/hAfEKqYS3o
— Rockstar Support (@RockstarSupport) November 15, 2021
On PC, Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – Definitive Edition is only available to purchase via the Rockstar Games Launcher, and requires an active internet connection in order to play. So, when Rockstar’s servers struggled at the trilogy’s launch on Thursday, it meant that the game was entirely unplayable for anyone that bought it. Not only that, but it also meant that GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2 were also unavailable to play.
Making a trio of PS2 era games require an internet connection is obviously completely ridiculous, but the bigger issue came from Rockstar mistakenly distributing a build of the games that included unlicensed music files, for San Andreas in particular. With music licenses expiring quite some times ago, Rockstar had to remove some tracks from the soundtrack quite a few years back, but inquisitive GTA fans quickly discovered that a number of now unlicensed music files were included in the Definitive Edition download, simply disabled and skipped by scripting. Rockstar should expect to get some letters from record label lawyers about this.
Additionally, maker of in-depth GTA videos and content Vadim M found that the game included an uncompiled version of main.scm. This dates back to the trilogy’s original development, featuring some of the developer notes and comments, revealing a lot of how the game works, and what cuts were made before shipping. For example, Prawn Island was nicknamed ‘Porn Island’ during development.
While the game was available for PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch consoles over the weekend, these versions should also have resulted in a few red faces at Rockstar as early hands on time from critics and fans alike has led to some disappointment over the quality of the product.
In particular, you would have hoped that the game would run flawlessly on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, but that simply isn’t the case, with the frame rate dropping from 60fps to 30fps during intense scenes. You can imagine that there are similar issues on PS4, Xbox One and Switch – Nintendo’s handheld only targets 30fps anyway.
Here’s GTA3 running in the 60fps Performance mode, but struggling like anything:
Vice City and San Andreas perform a little better, but the frame rate still drops to the low 40s when there’s a lot going on in the game.
It’s been a pretty awful launch from Rockstar, with the game also receiving plenty of criticism for the changes made to character models and game assets. Technical issues certainly haven’t helped matters.
Source: Twitter