Rockstar Games have disabled their PC launcher for Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition; while dataminers have uncovered a trove of information.
The game launched yesterday for Windows PC (via the Rockstar Games Launcher), Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. However, as of this time of writing, the game is unavailable on PC from Rockstar.
Rockstar Games tweeted on launch day that “Services for the Rockstar Games Launcher and supported titles are temporarily offline for maintenance. Services will return as soon as maintenance is completed.” This has persisted up to this time of writing.
As reported by VGC [1, 2], the PC version was also pulled from Rockstar’s online store. Dataminers later uncovered what could have been the reason.
Ash R. had uncovered that some of the removed music was still in the game, and merely disabled by a script. While San Andreas has its entire soundtrack in the game (with 22 tracks disabled in game), but some tracks that were removed in earlier editions of The Trilogy are still absent [1, 2] such as Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean.
Meanwhile, Vadim M. had uncovered the game included an uncompiled main.scm with the original developer comments. In other words, he could see what the original Rockstar North developer notes during the original games’ development; a “holy grail” of behind the scenes information.
The data includes evidence the news van was originally meant to contain hidden packages, early mission names, internal names for Prawn Island and Stacked Pizza being Porn Island and Pizza Hut, development woes as “this shit doesn’t work the way they wrote it,” strange notes about the Green Sabre mission, workarounds by tweaking the game’s engine, and how they fixed the Michelle date bug in the original trilogy.
While dataminers are happy, it seems Rockstar Games was not, and could have been the reason the game was pulled from PC. It may be more to do with the unlicensed music, as players could (arguably) unlock it via modding- a more critical distinction than adding it in themselves or via a third party. Rockstar may also be concerned with developer notes becoming pubic.
We shall keep you informed as we learn more.
