The CEO of Grove Street Games, the team that originally made the highly controversial GTA Trilogy: The Definitive Edition, has called out Rockstar after a new update removed the studio from the opening splash screens.
When the ‘Definitive Edition’ of the GTA Trilogy released in 2021, it didn’t take long for fans to notice many of its glaring issues. Game-breaking bugs and crucial graphical changes made it what we called a “definitive failure” for Rockstar at the time.
Things were so dire, in fact, the game was even temporarily pulled from Rockstar’s own launcher on PC. Rockstar even issued an apology for the state of the game’s launch.
Three years later, almost to the very day, and a November 12 update has finally fixed what was broken. Countless improvements to performance and moment-to-moment gameplay sought to all but overhaul the original release.
Developed by Grove Street Games, a team best known for porting older titles to mobile devices, they were held responsible for the shaky 2021 release. However, following the 2024 update, the studio’s logo was removed from the introductory splash screen. The team’s CEO has now spoken up to vent his frustrations.
Originally when booting up the Definitive Edition of the Trilogy, you were greeted by a series of logos and trademark details in the usual splash screen. Now, when booting up the game, Grove Street Games is nowhere to be seen.
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While this is the only change, misinformation spread across social media made it all the way to the top. Grove Street’s CEO has appeared furious over his team being removed from the game’s credits, when in reality, they still appear just the same as before. It’s purely the splash screen intro that’s changed.
“Speaking entire hypothetically [sic]: It’s a dick move to remove primary developers from credits in an update,” Owner and CEO Thomas Williamson said on X (formerly Twitter). Having been part of the team for over 17 years according to his LinkedIn profile, were it true, it’d be a bitter pill to swallow.
Speaking entire hypothetically: It's a dick 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.
— Thomas Williamson (@TSWilliamson) November 14, 2024
Williamson claimed much of the new update’s improvements came directly from the team at Grove Street Games, outlining their work on “hundreds of fixes.” Allegedly, these fixes were even done “years” ago, but were kept out of the game for unknown reasons.
Whether this is entirely accurate is obviously unclear for now, but do take Williamson’s writing with a grain of salt given his comments are in response to misinformation in the first place.
