GTA Trilogy remaster dev admits the launch was a mess but says metrics showed players enjoying it

Grove Street Games CEO Thomas Williamson has broken his silence on the GTA Trilogy – The Definitive Edition disaster, telling Wccftech that he agreed with most of the fan backlash — but insists behind-the-scenes data showed plenty of players were still having a good time.

Williamson was candid about the rough launch: "I agreed with most of the people's reactions," he said, adding that he felt the studio didn't have enough say in how the games shipped or how the fallout was handled. He believes a different response from the development side would have "changed the narrative significantly." Still, he leaned on the metrics: "There were a lot of people who were playing them and really enjoying them." He also acknowledged the other side of that coin — many players wanted something far more polished — and said he doesn't blame them. His conclusion is blunt: a truly definitive remaster of GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas probably can't come from an outsourced studio. "I don't think there'll ever be a perfect redux of those that's not done by Rockstar proper," he said, floating the idea of Rockstar North tackling it themselves.

The Definitive Edition launched in November 2021 to immediate and intense criticism — broken AI, mangled textures, bizarre character models, and missing music licenses all featured prominently in the backlash. Grove Street Games, which built the remasters using Unreal Engine rather than Rockstar's own RAGE engine, was quietly removed from the game's splash screen in a 2024 patch, a move that said plenty without saying anything. That same 2024 patch did add a classic lighting mode that fans had been asking for since launch, and it was well received. The original trilogy has since been delisted from most digital storefronts, meaning the Definitive Edition is effectively the only way to buy these games legally — which complicates any reading of "players enjoying them" from engagement metrics alone.

The community reaction to Williamson's comments has been skeptical, and understandably so — pointing to play metrics as evidence of satisfaction when the originals aren't available elsewhere is a hard sell. Whether Rockstar ever revisits these games properly remains an open question, but with GTA 6 consuming all available oxygen at the studio right now, a Rockstar North-led redemption arc for the trilogy feels like a distant prospect at best.