Rockstar has made Grand Theft Auto into one of the most valuable brands in gaming. But the company has also made it nearly impossible to play the older games in the series on current hardware. A new report lays out the full scope of the preservation problem, and it is worse than anyone expected.
The GTA Series is a Game Preservation Nightmare, and the numbers back it up. There are 16 numbered GTA games, and 11 of them are completely inaccessible on the current PlayStation. That means you cannot play GTA 4, GTA 1, GTA 2, Liberty City Stories, Vice City Stories, The Lost and Damned, The Ballad of Gay Tony, Grand Theft Auto Advance, or Chinatown Wars on PS5.
The PlayStation Problem
Backward compatibility is now the norm since the PS4 generation. Most publishers treat it as a standard feature. Rockstar does not. The company has kept GTA 5, GTA Online, GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas available on all current-gen hardware. But the older games are a different story.
GTA 4 and its expansions are still available on PC and Xbox thanks to Microsoft’s backward-compatibility efforts. On PlayStation, though, the door is shut. The 2021 reissue Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy — The Definitive Edition was outsourced and technically unpolished, artistically inconsistent, and it only covered three of the games.
What Is Missing
Here is the full list of what you cannot play on PS5:
- Grand Theft Auto 4
- GTA 1 and its expansions
- GTA 2
- Liberty City Stories
- Vice City Stories
- The Lost and Damned
- The Ballad of Gay Tony
- Grand Theft Auto Advance
- Chinatown Wars
That is the majority of the series. The games that survive on current hardware are the ones Rockstar has treated as flagship releases. The rest are locked behind a combination of disc requirements, mobile availability, and sheer neglect.
The Mobile Exception
Liberty City Stories and Chinatown Wars are randomly available on mobile phones. That is not a comprehensive solution. It is a fragment of what used to be a unified library.
How Other Series Compare
The report compares GTA’s situation to other major franchises. The 21 mainline Zelda games exist, and only six are unavailable on Switch 2, mostly due to multi-screen setup difficulties. The 16 numbered Final Fantasy games span 36 years, and only two are unavailable on PS5, one being a 24-year-old MMO.
Bethesda’s lavish 2025 remake of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion stands in contrast to Rockstar’s approach. The comparison is telling. Bethesda rebuilt a classic from scratch. Rockstar chose to preserve only the games it was already selling.
The Fan Reaction
Rockstar appeared surprised by fans’ harsh reaction to The Trilogy. The game was rushed, outsourced, and technically unfinished. Patches have since improved it, but the damage to the franchise’s reputation was done.
Why This Happened
The shift started in the mid-2000s. Rockstar moved from a multi-studio, multi-project developer to working on one gigantic release at a time. Resources dedicated to Red Dead Redemption 2 contributed to the slowdown. GTA Online became a massive new revenue stream, and the company began treating GTA like an Elder Scrolls title, prioritizing scarcity, scale, and quality over constant new releases.
What Fans Want
The preservation nightmare is not just about nostalgia. These games represent decades of design innovation and cultural influence. Losing them means losing the historical record of how the genre developed.
| Franchise | Total Games | Unavailable on PS5 | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| GTA | 16 | 11 | 5 accessible, 11 inaccessible |
| Zelda | 21 | 6 | Mostly multi-screen setup |
| Final Fantasy | 16 | 2 | One MMO unavailable |
The numbers are stark. Rockstar’s competitors have made backward compatibility a priority. Rockstar is the outlier.
The Bottom Line
The GTA Series is a Game Preservation Nightmare. The company has created a situation where the older games are harder to find than the newer ones. That is a failure of stewardship.
Rockstar has a right to prioritize its resources. But the company also has a responsibility to the games it made. The preservation problem is solvable. It just requires the company to choose solving it over maximizing the value of its flagship releases.
The trilogy reissue was a warning shot. The games are out there. Fans can source illegal PC copies and adapt them with community mods. But the company has to want to do it.
The preservation nightmare is not inevitable. It is a choice Rockstar has made. The question is whether the company will change course before it is too late.
See the video the story is built around at Polygon.
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