Call me cynical but to me this seems like expected damage control by Rockstar and the message between the lines is
'We knew at Rockstar (especially the few exes who green lite this project) that the GTA Trilogy defective edition release was going to be **** poor as the few who made the actual decisions at Rockstar wanted an increase in their Xmas bonus this year and decide to hand the development of the GTA Trilogy defective edition to a subpar outside mobile development studio because this was the cheapest option we could find. We knew there would be a backlash but we withdrew the original Trilogy from the store so that if the backlash was loud enough, we'd offer them as free to show that we are a good company and care about you, the customer (and your wallet).
Like so many times in the past, with all the other (mostly poor & subpar) iterations of the GTAs for all other platforms, we do the bare minimum so we can rake in your hard earned cash as you folks just keep buying these **** poor releases, regardless, and as long as you folks never learn your lesson, we'll keep taking your money and give a worse product in return. In time we shall make some occasional updates to the Trilogy but eventually most of you will move onto something else and those still waiting for more updates to make the GTA Trilogy actually worthy of the word 'DEFINITIVE' will never ever arrive (You'll have a better chance of everyone in the world agreeing to take the Covid vaccine!).
We are sure that soon after Xmas & New Year, most of you would have forgotten about the blatant cash grab on our precious IP and the backlash would be minimal whereas our Xmas bonusses will be at maximum. Sorry for the trouble but at least you felt immersed in all the GTA's games when you bought this, you felt(been) robbed.'
Should be pretty obvious by now, that this whole situation is mostly the fault of the consumers (including myself). Gamers that steadily, over the past few decades, have little to no self control on what they spend their money on and kept buying games that became of lower and lower standards and practices. Video game companies (especially the big ones) are there to make money. If people keep buying subpar/fault/crappy/lower quality/monitized/yearly editions with no real changes, and it keeps selling well enough, then these companies will continue to give you the minimal product/games they legally can get away with. As long as the majority of video game/PC game/console gamers, keep buying into companies bull_shit practices, they will continue them. Talk with your wallet, stop buying/preordering their games unless you actually know for sure the game is good enough to meet your standards, and please, most of you need to set your standards way way higher, especially the game streamers & reviewers!
