Following Rockstar’s announcement that they are revealing Grand Theft Auto VI in a new trailer very soon, they’re already doing some housecleaning.
As reported by PCGamesN, the company has scrubbed the Rockstar Social Club branding off of their website. All mentions of Social Club have completely been removed including not only simple text, but in icons and other design language as well.
Interestingly enough, the change in language did not really lead to any omissions or reductions in functionality. Instead, the functionality that users supposedly only had if they logged into the website with their Rockstar account and used Rockstar Social Club are now just incorporated into the site.
The reasons for removing the Rockstar Social Club branding aren’t really that many. On one end, it’s all eyes on deck for Rockstar, as Grand Theft Auto VI is set to be the biggest release in the company’s history.
On the other hand, there’s an obvious and simple explanation to this. Which is that the Rockstar Social Club branding failed. In fact, Rockstar may have already given up on it months or even years ago. The only reason it was still around? Rockstar didn’t want to spend any time on it until necessary.
Was there anyone who liked the idea of being part of the Rockstar Social Club? If Rockstar had honestly hoped to get fan loyalty across their games with this branding, they should have definitely offered more to its users to keep them preoccupied.
We now know this Rockstar Social Club branding preceded their poorly received release of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition. There’s no doubt that that rerelease deserved the backlash, because of the poor quality of the port, and Rockstar’s many questionable decisions for its development.
Now, only a few fans may remember, but Rockstar was giving away the original, unenhanced versions of these games, prior to Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition’s release. So it seemed like Rockstar did have other plans for this branding, that they simply were not able to follow through on.
Rockstar has not confirmed so, and may not even bother to do so. But the fact that no Rockstar fan is calling for the return of Rockstar Social Club probably cemented its fate.
Whatever the reason, Rockstar seems ready to move on, and we should be moving on as well. Very soon we will be seeing Grand Theft Auto VI all over Rockstar’s website, and that is as it should be.
