Over 3 days later, GTA Trilogy is back on PC minus ‘unintentional’ files

More than three days after it first went offline, the PC version of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – Definitive Edition can finally be accessed again via the Rockstar Launcher.

In a statement, Rockstar confirmed that the game had been updated and is now once again available for play and purchase, after it was pulled hours after its release last Thursday.

“We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience,” it said on Monday. “We are also working to improve and update overall performance as we move forward. We would like to thank everyone for their patience as we resolve these issues.”

Last week Rockstar took its entire PC games launcher offline for “maintenance”. The launcher later returned, minus the new GTA Trilogy, as the company claimed it was removing “unintentionally included” game files from the collection.

The offending files potentially include unlicensed music, full game scripts with developer notes, and even files related to the infamous, canned San Andreas sex mini-game ‘Hot Coffee’, according to users who have datamined the collection’s files.

Following the remaster collection’s release on Thursday, dataminers uncovered what they called a “holy grail” within its game files.

That includes nearly all the music that was removed from Vice City and San Andreas due to expired licences, which were actually still present and that the game simply chooses not to play.

Even more tantalising for fans was the discovery that the collection’s code contained an uncompiled version of the main.scm file, which contained all the game scripts for GTA III, Vice City and San Andreas, including cut and missing content, as well as notes from Rockstar North staff from that era.

Datamining reportedly uncovered even more surprises in the Definitive Edition game files on Saturday, when social media users claimed to have uncovered data related to ‘Hot Coffee’, the infamous, canned San Andreas sex mini-game that ended up costing Take-Two more than $20m in legal costs.

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In VGC’s GTA Trilogy – Definitive Edition review our critic wrote: “GTA Trilogy is a good way to play these three classic games, but it feels far from “definitive”.

“You’d think that if any games in the canon of the medium deserved the big-budget, pull out the stops remake, it would be these three, or at the very least, San Andreas, but what Rockstar has put out instead feels much less ambitious.”