The CEO of Grove Street Games, a primary developer on the ill-received Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – Definitive Edition, appears to be upset with Rockstar Games following a recent update to the remastered collection. The Grand Theft Auto series is one of the most beloved franchises in all of entertainment and it is responsible for a lot of nostalgia among gamers, thanks to its 20+ years of existence. The PS2-era of the series is what really put GTA on the map and allowed Rockstar Games to blossom in huge ways, which is partially why many fans were eager for Rockstar to re-release those games on modern platforms. After years of begging and some efforts that weren’t quite what fans were looking for, it looked like it was finally going to happen in the form of the GTA trilogy collection on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
Unfortunately, the GTA trilogy was a disaster upon its release in 2021. These games were ugly, filled with weird bugs, and just an all-around mess. It’s not totally clear what happened here given Rockstar Games is known for having huge quality control and doesn’t release something until it’s perfect. One would assume that a project that was meant to be very special like this would be polished extremely well, but that wasn’t the case. Many pointed fingers at Grove Street Games, the developer tasked with bringing these games to new consoles, as they were a primary developer on the project and were responsible for some poorly received mobile ports prior to this. All in all, it wasn’t a good look and there was a lot of drama surrounding these remasters. It wasn’t pretty, to say the least.
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Earlier this week, an unexpected update for the GTA trilogy was released on consoles which largely overhauled the game with huge fixes. It made major improvements to the way the game looks and left fans with a better taste in their mouth. It even included a change to the kinds of weapons players could carry around at the same time. Many were confused as to why it took three years to get such an update in the first place. Fans were quick to note that another Rockstar collaborator, Video Games Deluxe (former developers on LA Noire), was credited in the new update which suggested they were at least partially responsible for the fix.
The new update also removed Grove Street Games from the splash screen of the GTA trilogy, which seemed like a very intentional move from Rockstar Games. Grove Street Games remains in the actual credits of the game, but they were stripped of having their name being front-facing when people started up the game. Rockstar Games hasn’t really commented on what happened here, but Grove Street Games CEO Thomas Williamson didn’t mince words on X AKA Twitter. Williamson didn’t explicitly mention Rockstar Games or the GTA trilogy in his tweet and noted he was speaking “hypothetically”, but it’s not hard to read between the lines. He noted that it’s a “dick move” to remove credit from the developers and suggested that Grove Street Games did “hundreds of fixes” that were seen in this update, but were withheld by Rockstar Games for years.
Obviously, these are pretty hefty allegations and it is worth restating that Grove Street Games is still featured in the actual credits for the GTA trilogy. It seems likely that Rockstar Games probably won’t be working with Grove Street Games again in the future, as the whole situation has been extremely messy. It’s unclear if Rockstar will respond to these claims from Williamson, but we wouldn’t count on it. Rockstar tends to try to stay out of drama in the media as much as possible, but we’ll have to wait and see.
On the other hand, Rockstar Games is hard at work on GTA 6 which is currently slated to release in fall 2025. Whether or not Grove Street Games contributed to that project in any capacity is currently unknown, but it’s not uncommon for studios like Rockstar to outsource to other teams on big projects like GTA 6.