The plot thickens with the most recent GTA update as Grove Street Games has come out swinging at Rockstar, blaming them for the mess of the Definitive Edition of the Grand Theft Auto Trilogy. While I thought the Lana Del Rae and Lizzo Twitter beef was going to be the title match before tomorrow’s Tyson and Paul fight, it looks like there’s another bout on the card. I have spent the past few days digging deeper into the mystery of The Grand Theft Auto Trilogy: Definitive Edition’s sudden resurrection and it seems there’s a lot more than meets the eye than a lighting update. Put on your seatbelts, tune the radio to Lazlow, and follow the damn train CJ, as we take a look into the circumstances around this current update.
For those out of the loop, The GTA Trilogy Definitive Edition received an unexpected update on November 12th, exactly 3 years and one day after its disastrous launch that seemingly fixed an overwhelming number of bugs, glitches, and textures, making fans rejoice. Aside from the major lighting update, another huge change was removing Grove Street Game’s splash logo from the startup screens, as well as a smaller logo on the copyright pages. The main credits remain unchanged, but Grove Street Games was largely removed from gamers’ eyes, with many commenting that this was great news. On the surface many gamers, myself included, assumed Grove Street Games were fired and Rockstar had taken the Trilogy back after a perceived service agreement lasting 3 years, but a tweet from Grove Street Games founder has flipped that theory on its head, causing me to dig deeper into the timeline. CEO, Thomas Williamson fired back at Rockstar in a not-so-thinly veiled tweet implying Rockstar Games is responsible for holding back this patch, and implying Grove Street Games is responsible for developing the impressive list of fixes.
The tweet stated “Speaking entirely hypothetically: It’s a dick move to remove primary developers from credits in an update, especially when an update includes hundreds of fixes that were provided by those developers that stayed out of players’ hands for years.” While the tweet was met with little sympathy, garnering a lot of criticism from avid fans, I decided to try to verify these claims. The first rule of journalism is to seek truth and report it, but as a lot of what has happened has occurred behind closed doors and NDAs, we can only look into the timeline of events to hypothesize what is true. With stories like this, there are always 3 sides. Rockstars side, Grove Streets side, and somewhere in between, we have the truth.
Pre Launch, Wardrum Studios is revealed to be the Developer of the GTA Trilogy Definitive Edition and is renamed Grove Street Games. While many assume this is in correlation to San Andreas, the studio was established in The Grove Street Neighborhood in Florida, where they had been located for years. While it could be likely that this was also a double play on words, it’s safe to say that Grove Street Games will not be renamed after the events of the launch. The original press release regarding the rename came out in August 2020, over a year before the release of the GTA Trilogy, and about halfway through the development cycle. They explained the rebrand by stating “After over 12 years in the game development industry, War Drum Studios will officially change its name to Grove Street Games. The choice to update our name was inspired by our devotion to our community, as we are located in the Grove Street Neighborhood in Gainesville, Florida.”
On October 13, 2021, just two months before the launch of the Definitive Edition, Rockstar removed the classic versions of GTA3, Vice City, and San Andreas in order to push sales of the new game drawing the ire of fans, YouTubers, and outlets alike. Rockstar producer Rich Rosado admitted to using AI Upscaling in a 2021 pre-launch interview with “The Gamer” estimating that over 100,000 assets had been upscaled by AI but quickly bouncing back by stating a lot of assets were then “painted over.” A glitch in the PlayStation Store 24 hours prior to the global launch would be the first sign of the series’ distress, as thousands of Australian gamers were granted access a day early, leaking that music tracks had been cut, the game had been censored, and things weren’t all they seemed to be.
The Grand Theft Auto Trilogy launched to mixed reception from critics, and detest from fans. A lot of the AI upscaling had ruined character personalities, was broken beyond playability on Switch, and was perceived as an insult to the games that came before it. Rockstar quickly issued apologies on Social Media, claiming they were rapidly working to deploy fixes, but higher up the food chain it was a different story. Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Take-Two blamed the launch on a “Glitch which has now been resolved” in a CNBC Interview “With regards to the GTA Trilogy, that was actually not a new title… That was a remaster of pre-existing titles. We did have a glitch in the beginning, that glitch was resolved. And the title has done just great for the company.” This statement further infuriated the fanbase who felt like the issues were being downplayed, and rightly so. Following this, Rockstar restored the original versions of the GTA Trilogy to the Rockstar shop, and in an attempt at damage control, offered them for free to PC gamers who purchased the Definitive Edition.
Post Launch, Grove Street Games started deploying patches and fixes, chipping away at the long list of issues that gave fans hope, but the patches started becoming fewer and farther between, with the last major update being on 18th October 2022, seemingly leaving the Definitive Edition dead in the water. This is where things get interesting.
I decided to connect with Tom Williamson on LinkedIn, and while I haven’t heard from him yet due to time differences, I found a post that alluded to Grove Street Games ending support on GTA Trilogy in Early 2023 as they moved to fix and relaunch the (now) incredible Switch port of Ark, a full-time project requiring the entire team. On surface value, this looked like they had moved on from the Definitive Edition and it’s assumed Rockstar took back control. Williamson, in his heat-of-the-moment Tweet, outright says that Grove Street Games handed this patch to Rockstar, who intentionally withheld it from players, meaning that this patch has been sitting there for almost 2 years. To requote a part of his tweet criticising Rockstar for removing them from the opening credits “especially when an update includes hundreds of fixes that were provided by those developers that stayed out of players’ hands for years.”
Did Rockstar games purposely sink the GTA Trilogy Definitive Edition? and if so why? The timeline of events clearly shows Grove Street Games either being taken off, or taking themselves off the Definitive Edition in April 2023, and if what Williamson claims is true, that means the update was likely handed over well before their involvement ended, likely early 2023… almost 2 years ago. Now, this is as far as my digging has got me so far, and I have reached out to both Rockstar and Williamson directly, but given how small What’s it Like is, I doubt I will hear back from them, so this investigation really gets us asking more questions. Mainly, if the patch was ready for deployment 2 years ago, why didn’t that happen? and judging by the reaction from Grove Street Games, they were just as out of the loop as us gamers were when it comes to the GTA Trilogy.
My theories boil down to this. The patch was initially developed by Grove Street and then reworked by Rockstar, but even then, the patch would have had a development time as long as the actual game. Or, Rockstar is anticipating the release of GTA 6 and doesn’t want to have the Trilogy tarnishing that legacy and impacting sales. They’ve had a few rough years following the Definitive Editions release, and while Grove Street bore the brunt of it, Rockstar also released a barebones port of Red Dead Redemption at full retail further outraging gamers who feel disrespected as consumers. Rockstar has certainly lost a lot of goodwill with fans, and patching this fan-worshipped series in their eyes might be the olive branch they can easily extend to secure future sales.
Will update if anything develops.
