After months of speculation, Rockstar has officially announced that it's remastering its PlayStation 2-era Grand Theft Auto games with updated graphics and enhanced gameplay. That means a whole new generation of gamers will be able to play Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City and San Andreas. However, there might be one big problem with Rockstar's plan: The company is pulling the currently available digital editions of all three games from stores.
This isn't to say remastering and remaking these three GTA games is a bad choice. More access to three of the most beloved games of all time is absolutely not a bad thing. Plus, fixing some of the issues that make them feel dated will only help people to experience them in the best possible way. The original version of Grand Theft Auto III, for example, had frustrating combat and the subsequent games struggle with a lot of common problems of the late PlayStation 2, including weird graphical problems and excessive load times. While just what exactly Rockstar will change isn't known at this time, it's safe to say those issues will get fixed.
Those same flaws, though, are part of the experience of playing the original trilogy. Grand Theft Auto III, in particular, hasn't aged well and has a lot of problems. However, the game helped define the sandbox and inspired such titles as Saints Row and Mafia, among many others. This meant other games were, on a fundamental level, responding to the massive success of the GTA franchise. Some aped the formula and failed to find success, while others remixed and improved upon mechanics. In turn, Grand Theft Auto was then influenced by those titles. The problems in those titles are then interesting because they inform solutions that have become standard, like cover-based shooting. They're part of a historical dialogue concerning sandbox/action-adventure games.
The current digital editions do fix some of the minor annoyances present in Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City and San Andreas. However, those problems are generally just of the technological variety and resulted from hardware restrictions. Removing them actually just makes those original games the best possible versions of themselves; they're a makeover rather than plastic surgery.
The likely reason for Rockstar removing the digital editions despite them having already been made is pretty simple: Those versions of the games will compete with the remaster. They'll eat into the company's potential profits and make the remaster a less profitable endeavor. Rockstar may also not be interested in continuing to bring those digital editions to new platforms, and the remaster represents an opportunity to make future ports easier.
However, the choice to completely remove those easily accessible versions of the games means players will have to have either already bought the digital editions, own the original discs or emulate them to experience the titles as released. The first of those options gates out younger or new gamers, the second requires dealing with the often frustrating video game resale market and the third is often illegal and morally dubious. So while the new definitive edition of the Grand Theft Auto trilogy is a great way to experience the titles, removing the digital versions from the store is disappointing from an academic and preservationist position.