Just as an update: This is still an issue

Additionally, the temporary solution described in the linked forum thread breaks anytime the game updates, as the game redownloads the entire problematic gro file and puts it back in place. This means you'll have to re-remove the gro file after every update.

While I posted this a while ago in the linked forum thread, I feel that the post was overlooked, and that it's necessary to re-iterate it here.