Following Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition’s launch on PC on November 11, Rockstar had an emergency on its hands. It took down the Rockstar Games Launcher and delisted the PC version of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition from its storefront. Buyers had no access to the game, and still don’t, and didn’t know why it was happening, either. Rockstar’s social media simply said it was working on the issue.
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Rockstar has since confirmed that the problem is that Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition includes a huge amount of “unintentional files” that it has to remove before republishing. These files are reported to include music found in the original games that it no longer has the licenses for, and even files related to the infamous Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Hot Coffee incident.
Unfortunately, Rockstar says that it won’t be bringing the PC version of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition back until it’s finished removing these files from the game. A timeframe for this process has not been provided. It could happen in days, or it could potentially take weeks. If Rockstar thought it could make the changes quickly, it almost certainly wouldn’t have taken the drastic step of removing the game from sale entirely.
This is, obviously, a disastrous situation. Thousands of PC gamers likely purchased Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition and haven’t been able to play it. Rockstar didn’t tell them what was going on until after speculation, driven by datamining, theoried out that it could be related to unlicensed music. For a company as large and successful as Rockstar, it’s a mystery how things got this bad.
For those hoping to play Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition, the why of the issue matters less than when it will be rectified. There is no answer to that question at the moment, however. Rockstars asks that Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition buyers simply remain patient before they’re able to play the game that they purchased.
Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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