It's no secret that the launch of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy — The Definitive Edition hasn't gone well. The whole affair has been closer to being an abject failure, really, drawing massive amounts of criticism with players requesting refunds en masse and sharing videos, gifs and screenshots of all the issues the remasters have. Now, Rockstar Games is allegedly diverting resources to fix it all up.
To put the problems into perspective, Rockstar recently announced that not only are they bringing back the original, not-remastered versions of GTA 3, Vice City and San Andreas to PC storefronts where they can be bought individually, but that anyone who purchased The Definitive Edition will get these original version entirely for free. While we won't be playing prettier versions of these games, we will be able to play ones that aren't broken.
Alongside the return of the original versions to stores, Rockstar and Grove Street Games have committed to developing updates and fixes for The Definitive Edition. Now, according to reports from insiders and known informants, those commitments are so strong that the company is diverting resources from other projects to ensure that they salvage The Definitive Edition as quickly as possible.
According to a Tweet from TezFunz2, who has been accurately leaking and reporting insider information about GTA games and updates for years now, this reallocation of resources also means that the usual holiday release windows for major GTA Online and Red Dead Online DLC will be pushed back.
This is definitely still a rumor, but it's coming from a source that has consistently been proven to be reliable. Nonetheless, we don't suspect that players need to worry about a long delay as Rockstar likes to end the year on a high note, something it's been consistently pulling off with GTA Online and big holiday DLC.
https://twitter.com/TezFunz2/status/1463119432021164040
Just about every December news breaks that GTA Online smashed another concurrent player record, and while the natural and overwhelming popularity of the game coupled with a lot of people having a lot of free time around the holidays contributes, releasing major DLC around this time is likely the main cause.
While it makes sense that the company is focusing on fixing up The Definitive Edition, from a business standpoint it also wouldn't be the ideal approach to take significant resources away from your massive money-maker and invest them in a relatively minor release with an already tarnished reputation.
Of course, the gaming industry is no stranger to surprising redemption stories, but many of the issues documented with The Definitive Edition stem from these remasters being based on the already flawed mobile ports — and a patch won't rebuild the entire game from assets-up.
We're well over the half-way mark of November, so the usual release window of the big holiday DLC expected each year for GTA Online is fast approaching. That said, the fact that we haven't heard anything yet isn't definitive — Rockstar sure loves keeping things down low until the last minute. There is a slim chance we'll hear news this Thursday, but we wouldn't bet on it.
In any case, we're interested to see what sort of progress will be made on fixing Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy — The Definitive Edition.
