Rockstar’s much-anticipated Grand Theft Auto 5 Enhanced release has hit a rough patch, becoming the lowest-rated game in the GTA series on Steam. Despite the excitement surrounding its release, the game’s reception has been less than favorable, with players voicing frustrations over a series of issues ranging from account migration problems to performance struggles.
As spotted by PCGamesN, Grand Theft Auto 5 Enhanced sits at “Mixed” reviews on the Valve-owned platform, with 51 percent positive reviews from almost 12,000 reviewers.
Released just three days ago, GTA 5 Enhanced promised players an upgraded experience of the 12-year-old classic Grand Theft Auto 5 for PC. The new version was offered for free to existing owners of GTA 5. However, the excitement quickly turned to disappointment as players encountered a variety of issues.
While GTA 5 has long been celebrated as one of the best-selling and critically acclaimed games of all time, the enhanced edition has failed to deliver the smooth and improved experience many expected. Players have been quick to express their dissatisfaction, highlighting issues like account migration failures, performance stuttering, and visual quality problems.
Most complaints revolves around the account migration process. Long-time GTA Online players who were promised an easy transition to the Enhanced Edition have found themselves facing frustration.
Many players reported encountering “not eligible” errors when attempting to migrate their existing profiles. This has left players feeling as though years of progress were erased, leading to significant backlash.
One user shared their disappointment: “I can’t migrate either of my two accounts. R* support is completely useless and can’t help. With the game being over 10 years old, I am sure as hell not going to completely restart all my progress. Enhanced should have been an update directly applied to the game we already had, not an entirely new game.”
For a game titled Enhanced, players expected significant visual improvements and smooth gameplay. However, despite high-end setups, such as NVIDIA 4090 graphics cards, players are still experiencing severe stuttering and poor performance.
Even with frame rates limited to 60 FPS, the game continues to lag and stutter, which is frustrating for those who invested in top-tier hardware for the best experience.
One frustrated player described their experience: “Horrible stuttery mess, even when limiting fps to 60. My 4090 is barely breaking a sweat, and yet the game’s still lagging.” Another player complained about the visual quality: “Just played the game, looks blurry and washed out for some reason on highest details. Can’t turn on RTX; it’s just greyed out in the settings menu.”
Rockstar removed the text chat feature from GTA Online, which has been a staple of communication in the game. For a game built around interaction—whether it’s planning heists, negotiating deals, or just having fun with other players—stripping away such a core feature has left fans confused and upset.
A user summed up the sentiment: “Why take away something that wasn’t broken? Now we’re stuck with clunky in-game SMS.”
The complaints from players about GTA 5 Enhanced are not just limited to performance and account issues. Some have expressed disappointment with the general feel of the game, claiming that it has been downgraded rather than enhanced. “Enhanced? More like downgraded. The game looks worse, runs worse, and somehow feels clunkier than ever,” said one reviewer.
Despite all the negative feedback, GTA 5 Enhanced still managed to peak at over 187,000 concurrent players on Steam at launch. This shows that while the backlash has been intense, the game’s pull remains strong, at least for the time being.
Rockstar has yet to make an official statement about the backlash, players are hopeful that upcoming patches will address the game’s most glaring issues. Fans are particularly hoping for fixes to the account migration problems, improved performance, and perhaps the return of the text chat feature that many feel was unnecessary to remove.
