The GTA Trilogy is finally playable again (updated)

(Image credit: Rockstar)

Update November 14: The GTA Trilogy became available again via the Rockstar Launcher earlier today. Here's the official statement from Rockstar's status page:

"We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience. 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."

Original story below.

Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy is being sold on PC through the Rockstar store, which uses the Rockstar Games Launcher: a desktop app much like Battle.net or UPlay. Unfortunately, shortly after Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy's release yesterday, the Rockstar Games Launcher went on the fritz and has now been down for more than 16 hours.

Rockstar did issue a brief statement via social media that it would be "temporarily offline for maintenance."

Services for the Rockstar Games Launcher and supported titles are temporarily offline for maintenance. Services will return as soon as maintenance is completed.November 11, 2021

A couple of hours ago the Rockstar account added: "We thank you for your patience and understanding as we continue to work on restoring services for the Rockstar Games Launcher and supported titles."

Patience and understanding? On the internet? Needless to say some people are having kittens about this, and it is truly unfortunate that it's happened alongside the release of GTA: The Trilogy. The fact that the whole launcher is down means this is also affecting players across Rockstar's games. PCG has contacted Rockstar for comment, and will update with any response.

How to check the Rockstar Games Launcher's status

Rockstar Games has a service status page on its website with information for its games across consoles and PCs. As of this writing, the Rockstar Games Launcher is still showing red across the board for authentication, store access, cloud services and downloads. It's completely down, in other words, but you can refresh the page above for news.

Along with the launcher, the status page shows that GTA Online and Red Dead Online are also both down on PC. The console versions and Rockstar Social Club are all green.

Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."