During a recent earnings call, Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick has confirmed that developer Rockstar Games will continue to support Grand Theft Auto Online even after the release of the highly-anticipated Grand Theft Auto 6. Responding to a question about the future of GTA Online, he also noted that the parent company has a “pretty light touch” when it comes to the studio’s “creative activities”.
“Look, Rockstar Games is the locus of information about, you know, where the titles go content and marketing, and generally, we have a pretty light touch when we talk about the label’s creative activities,” said Zelnick. “At the same time, I have every reason to believe we’ll continue to support GTA Online. There’s a great community that loves it, that stays engaged. And again in this quarter, Rockstar has shown that when you deliver great additional content, despite how long [GTA Online] has been at market, people show up.”
Zelnick had shared similar sentiments about GTA Online back in February 2025, when he spoke about Take-Two Interactive’s commitment to long-running multiplayer games. He had brought up titles like 2012’s NBA 2K Online, which continued to see support even after the release of its sequel five years later.
“I’m going to speak theoretically only because I’m not going to talk about a particular project when an announcement hasn’t been made,” said Zelnick at the time. “But generally speaking, we support our properties when the consumers are involved with those titles. As an example, we launched NBA 2K Online in China, I think originally in 2012 if I’m not mistaken. And then we launched NBA 2K Online 2 in China in 2017. If I’m not mistaken. We did not sunset Online 1. They both are still in the market and they serve consumers and they’re alive and we have this massive audience.”
“So we’ve shown a willingness to support legacy titles when a community wants to be engaged with them.”
While neither Rockstar Games nor Take-Two Interactive have confirmed this yet, Grand Theft Auto 6 will also likely end up getting its own equivalent to GTA Online. While both will likely see continued development and support in the short term, the newer iteration of GTA Online will probably see more and more players jump into it to make use of the latest release’s features. In the long term, once enough players have migrated, GTA Online will most probably get shut down.
It is also worth noting that, while some of Take-Two Interactive’s releases have seen long-term support, others haven’t been so lucky. A key example of this is the WWE 2K franchise, with a new release often causing all online components of older entries to get shut down. WWE 2K24 is the latest example of this, with it being taken down from digital stores as of February 2.
Grand Theft Auto 6 is being developed for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, and will be coming out on November 19 after having seen several delays. More delays might be unlikely, with marketing plans for the release being on track to kick off this Summer, according to Zelnick.