Something has gone very, very wrong since yesterday’s launch of GTA Trilogy on PC. As of last night, all mention of a PC version has been removed from Rockstar’s own site, and the Rockstar Games Launcher app has gone completely offline. Anyone who bought the remastered collection before it vanished is currently unable to play.
It has been at least 18 hours since the sudden disappearance of the PC’s GTA Trilogy, and Kotaku can confirm that the Launcher is not working. Which means all Rockstar PC games, including Red Dead Redemption 2 and GTA Online, are currently impossible to play.
For whatever reasons, Rockstar chose to remove all versions of GTAs III, Vice City, and San Andreas from alternative PC stores—including Steam—ahead of this launch, meaning its bespoke software is now the only way to buy and play the games. Or indeed, the only way to not play it.
Rockstar’s support Twitter has described this as being, “temporarily offline for maintenance,” saying services will be back as soon as this is complete. Except, it said this some 18 hours ago, on the big launch day for the remastered versions of the first three 3D Grand Theft Auto games.
Astonishingly, the account then went silent for 15 hours, before early this morning finally acknowledging the problem hadn’t gone away.
“We thank you for your patience and understanding,” they said to customers who’d just spent money on a game that was suddenly taken away again the same day. They continued, “as we continue to work on restoring services for the Rockstar Games Launcher and supported titles.”
The normally chatty support account has also stopped replying to anyone’s messages since this incident started, no matter the topic. We’ve contacted Rockstar for more information, and will update should they respond.
Kotaku has tested more recent GTA and Red Dead titles that remain on Steam, and they too cannot launch, tied in as they are to Rockstar’s launcher.
This is a very peculiar look, with a real lack of information from Rockstar to players who want to know what is going on with their purchases. Clearly something pretty disastrous has happened, for it to have been down for almost a day, and with the company not even offering an estimate for when things might be working again.
Update 11/12/2021 6:59 p.m. ET: Rockstar Games’ launcher is back up, but Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy still needs some tinkering before it returns.
“Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy will remain unavailable to play or purchase as we work to remove some data files that were unintentionally included in the new versions of these games,” a notice on Rockstar Games’ support site explains. “We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and we hope to have the correct versions of the games up and running for everyone as soon as possible.”