Rockstar is giving 'GTA' trilogy customers free copies of the classics

A week and a half after releasing the most botched game of the year, Rockstar is ready to make amends. The company issued an official apology on its website this weekend, promising that technical fixes will be coming to the remastered GTA: The Trilogy in the near future. The new statement is not the first time Rockstar has apologized for its mess, but it is the most explicit the company has been in its public shame.

“The Grand Theft Auto series — and the games that make up this iconic trilogy — are as special to us as we know they are to fans around the world,” Rockstar writes. “The updated versions of these classic games did not launch in a state that meets our own standards of quality, or the standards our fans have come to expect.”

The statement is vastly remorseful, though Rockstar does ask one favor of fans: Stop harassing the game’s developers on social media. The company asks that players stick to a “respectful and civil discourse” as the bugs are worked out. And it’s offering a slight boon to help smooth things over.

And you get a classic, and you get a classic — Rockstar is very well aware that the version of GTA: The Trilogy released a week and a half ago is a disaster. Patches will (hopefully) fix the worst of the games’ issues, but there’s no telling when everything will be fully operational.

Rockstar has made a small but meaningful concession to gamers scorned by the remasters. The classic PC versions of each game included in the trilogy pack — Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas — are being reinstated to the Rockstar Store through June 30, 2022. Everyone who bought the PC trilogy will receive a free copy of each game in the Rockstar Games Launcher.

It’s unclear whether or not Rockstar will be providing similar access to those who purchased GTA: The Trilogy on other consoles. The Switch version, in particular, has been noted as virtually unplayable.

Not so remastered — The story behind how GTA: The Trilogy came to be so intensely bad has yet to be divulged by Rockstar. The PC version of the game, in particular, had so many bugs and unintended lines of code that it temporarily killed the entire Rockstar Games Launcher.

The first major update for the remastered game is available now for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, and Xbox One. The list of fixes is overwhelming, including everything from camera issues to rain visual effects.

All in all, the “remastered” versions of these classics have turned out to largely be… much worse than the originals. But hey, at least there’s a cheat code to give your character an enormous head. That’s something.