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The head of GTA Trilogy developer Grove Street Games has spoken out on social media to criticize the removal of “lead developers from the credits” following the game‘s major update this week for PC and consoles.
Tuesday’s GTA Trilogy patch finally brought fixes to the best-received mobile version of the games (worked by another studio, Video Games Deluxe), such as a classic lighting mode that restores the look of the original versions of the games, as well as improvements to character models. and other visual adjustments.
The update also aligned the GTA Trilogy home screen with that of the mobile version, and Rockstar is simply listed as GTA’s developer.
It is this change that Grove Street Games’ Thomas Williamson appears to be reacting to on social media now.
“Hypothetically speaking,” Williamson wrote in
However, as noted by GTA Trilogy fans, the game credits have not changed and Grove Street Games and its staff are still listed as before.
Speaking entire hypothetically: It’s a dick move to remove primary developers from credits in an update, especially when an update includes hundreds of fixes that were provided by those developers that stayed out of players’ hands for years.
— Thomas Williamson (@TSWilliamson) November 14, 2024
Ensuring staff working on games receive proper accreditation has long been a thorny issue, with Rockstar itself in the past coming under heavy criticism for leaving staff members uncredited. Here, however, Williamson’s comments, hypothetical as they are, appear to be based on misleading media reports that suggested Grove Street Games no longer received any credit.
Williamson already made headlines when GTA Trilogy, plagued by bugs, performance issues and code for the illicit sex minigame Hot Coffee, first arrived to comment on the huge wave of backlash against the game.
“It’s a lot of fun to see players really enjoying what we’ve created for them,” Williamson wrote at the time, as Rockstar itself apologized, offered a free game to PC owners, and pulled the plug on GTA Trilogy for days. “Honestly, I’m enjoying this unparalleled level of scrutiny in our studio. Today we celebrate the launch of our monumental project, while we work on updates. :-)”
