Update (Nov 12, 2021 at 8:01PM ET): The Rockstar Games Launcher is once again working. Unfortunately, the GTA Trilogy is still unavailable due to those extra files that were "unintentionally included" in yesterday's release of The Definitive Version. You can read more about those additional files in our original story below.
The Rockstar Games Launcher is now back online. However, Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition will remain unavailable to play or purchase as we work to remove some data files that were unintentionally included in the new versions of these games," Rockstar wrote. "We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and we hope to have the correct versions of the games up and running for everyone as soon as possible.
The Rockstar Games Launcher has been having major connectivity issues for pretty much the entire day. Rockstar had taken the servers down for maintenance yesterday (November 11) at 2:23PM (ET). The servers continue to be down now, over 28 hours later. The last update from Rockstar Support on Twitter came 13 hours ago (as of this posting) saying that they are continuing to work on restoring services.
While the server issues seem to be a solid explanation for pulling The Trilogy from being sold to consumers, there is one other possibility. As discovered yesterday around noon (ET), the removed music tracks from Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy are actually still in the game files. The only thing that prevents them from playing is a simple script that just doesn't let them play.
Not all of the "removed" tracks are still included in the game files though, just some of them. It could be that Rockstar Games also pulled the game from sale in order to properly remove the content from the game files. These updates were developed by Grove Street Games, a studio formerly known as War Drum Studios. This studio previously worked on the mobile ports for Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City, and San Andreas. They also did mobile ports of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, Max Payne, and Bully.
Also included, surely by mistake, is an uncompiled version of the main.scm file. This file contains all of the game scripting for all three titles. It also includes details about cut and missing content as well as developer notes written for the original game releases. Apparently the Switch release contains even more uncompiled files including internal tools, script sources, text, and more.
Some examples of what has been discovered in that file can be read below.
