We have an unusual story regarding one of the most notorious remasters in recent memory, Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition.
Last week, we had reported that Rockstar published a patch to add Classic Lighting for the game to PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. Days later, the former developer complained about their credit being removed from the game. While some outlets reported this as mere sour grapes, we have reason to believe that Rockstar, and Take-Two, may have ripped off that developer, and their own customers, all over again.
For this we credit YouTube channel What’s It Like, who made a video that shed light on the situation. We also verified the information they shared on our end, and have our own research to add.
Getting back to that disgruntled developer, that was Thomas Williamson, the head of Grove Street Games. Grove Street was hired to make Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition, the same one that released in an embarrassingly broken state two years ago.
But what most gamers may not know is that Grove Street was given an essentially impossible task, of delivering remasters of three giant open world games, on six separate platforms, with not enough time or support. You can watch this What Happened? video for the details, but we will point out one observation YouTuber Matt McMuscles made – that the game received a patch a week after launch, that looks like it should have been the day one patch.
Moving forward, the last update that Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition received was on October 18, 2022. Based on this post from Thomas Williamson on Linkedin, Grove Street didn’t start work on ARK: Survival Evolved for Nintendo Switch until April 2023. That means that they may have still been working on the collection as recently as March or April 2023.
Now, we need to return to the other developer of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition, Australia based Video Games Deluxe. Netflix licensed the games from Rockstar and Take-Two, to publish them on Android and iOS. Notably, Video Games Deluxe was listed as the developer of those mobile ports, and these versions were published on December 2023.
Last February, Video Games Deluxe shared their thanks to players for the positive reception to their mobile ports. As we reported last week, it was reported that Video Games Deluxe worked on Classic Lighting for the games for Android and iOS.
So, jumping forward to last week, our report focused only on the Classic Lighting update, being brought to three of the collection’s six platforms. Interestingly enough, in about a day, more patches came for Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition. This time, all platforms received patches, including the much-maligned Nintendo Switch. Reception to the collective updates is positive, with some reviewers saying, if imperfect, the collection is now at a state where they can recommend them for some fans.
We believe what happened was that Video Games Deluxe got their Classic Lighting patch released first, a day before Grove Street Games’ last patch that made fixes for all the versions of the games across the board. The Video Games Deluxe patch took 11 months to come from mobile to PC and consoles. However, the Grove Street Games’ patch was held back by a full two years. Grove Street Games’ patch could have fixed the game sooner for more players, earning more praise, if Take-Two chose to release it in a timely manner.
It really isn’t clear what happened here, but we can’t really expect Take-Two Interactive to be forthcoming. They dragged their heels as long as they could before admitting they closed studios Roll7 and Intercept Games. What we see here is evidence that Rockstar and Take-Two, somewhat perplexingly, chose not to fix their games earlier than they could have. They deliberately kept the games worse for longer, and we don’t know if they’ll even ever tell us why.
