The poorly received Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy — The Definitive Edition got a surprise and much-needed update earlier this week, but not everybody is happy with the results. After the update went live on PC and consoles, fans noticed quickly that Grove Street Games, the studio that developed Definitive Edition with Rockstar Games, had been removed from the splash screen ahead of the start menu. Now Grove Street CEO Thomas Williamson has spoken out on X about the situation.
“Speaking entire hypothetically: It’s a [jerk] move to remove primary developers from credits in an update, especially when an update includes hundreds of fixes that were provided by those developers that stayed out of players’ hands for years,” Williamson wrote.
Users were quick to point out that Grove Street Games is still listed in the end of game credits. The studio was just removed from the initial splash screen.
GTA: The Trilogy includes Grand Theft Auto 3, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and was first released in 2021 on PC and console. However, it flattened the look of each game by removing their distinctive hues, which fans criticized. They also featured performance issues, poor lighting in dimly lit areas, and blocky water effects. Many of these bugs were fixed when the bundle came to Netflix last year, and now they’ve finally made their way to other versions of the game.
That means right now you can play three iconic games on basically every platform except Nintendo Switch and you’ll get the same experience. And according to Williamson’s post, Grove Street Games helped with those updates as well.