Years of rumors about its scale, protagonists, city and even the weather coalesced into the first trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6. To say it looks great (for a trailer) would be an understatement – Rockstar’s sequel looks to include everything that fans love about Grand Theft Auto while still feeling relatively grounded. Is that a comment on the present day that we’ve come full circle from satirizing something and simply portraying it as is? Probably, but fans are loving it. Despite being less than a week old, the reveal trailer currently has over 150 million views.
Of course, with how good the single-player looks, there are questions to ask. No, not just about the size of Vice City or everything you can do, or even how the shooting and movement will feel, but rather about Grand Theft Auto Online. Many will recall the online mode debuting with Grand Theft Auto 5 in 2013, shortly after the base game launched, and it’s become a massive sensation ever since. Some may even see the online mode as taking away resources for potential single-player content for the base game, though it’s received several story-focused updates over the years.
The numbers don’t lie, though. For its first four years of launch, GTA Online generated over $1 billion in total revenues, per analyst firm Superdata. In 2020, it was estimated to have earned almost $600 million. The fact that it’s still receiving support and significant content updates after nearly ten years and launching on three different console generations is amazing. It’s not just an online mode for a popular video that’s sold millions and millions of units – for many, it’s almost a way of life and one of the few things they play regularly.
The question now is: What does Rockstar do with it when Grand Theft Auto 6 launches?
After all, it has a big new playground to work with. Does it simply release a new iteration of GTA Online called, for lack of a better term, GTA Online 2? Does it cut or downplay support for the original in favor of the follow-up? Will Take-Two Interactive assign the original to a different studio and have Rockstar take up the lion’s share of the work on the follow-up?
Going with GTA Online 2 would make the most sense from an outsider’s perspective. Why not leverage all the new technology Grand Theft Auto 6 is introducing? It could lead to new experiences and gameplay opportunities, providing a breath of fresh air from running around in Los Santos for ten years (which will be 12 by the time GTA 6 launches). It may even be good for the development team since it can experiment with things that aren’t possible within the current GTA 5 framework.
However, there are several problems with this approach. A new GTA Online would raise the question about players’ progress for all those years in the original. Does that automatically transfer over? Some content could carry over, though Rockstar allowing players to take everything they’ve unlocked would probably be impossible. Assuming it doesn’t, it’s asking long-time players to start over. Some may appreciate a fresh start, but for those who grinded away thousands of hours (or spent money on Shark Cards), it may not go down so well.
It’s one of the reasons why we’ve never seen a sequel to World of Warcraft. Blizzard Entertainment eventually caved and offered WoW Classic, which it successfully monetized in different ways. However, that’s an older version of the game that’s running on separate servers. It could be considered separate at this point, especially with how much WoW has changed over the years. However, it’s not the same as introducing a sequel and asking fans to abandon almost everything from the original.
So why doesn’t Rockstar have two different games running simultaneously? It works for Runescape, which has RuneScape 3 and Old School RuneScape, the latter still receiving new content. Current players are kept happy and can choose to hop over to the new game without sacrificing any content they’ve engaged with over the years. Newer players introduced to the series with GTA 6 may also be interested in engaging with the older game if they get bored.
It’s unknown exactly how many developers at Rockstar are working on Grand Theft Auto Online, much less on GTA 6. We know it pulled developers from Red Dead Online to work on GTA 6, effectively ending support with no hope for new content updates. But potentially running two online games at once doesn’t seem feasible for Rockstar, especially with reports about it expanding on GTA 6’s base game with new single-player-focused updates. Does it possibly have the resources available to accommodate all of these things?
Again, we’ll have to wait and see – it remains a possibility, but it could also result in fewer updates for GTA Online, that too at a slower pace.
The reason to ask these questions now, despite Grand Theft Auto 6 launching in 2025 (most likely by March 31st, 2023, if Take-Two wants it within the fiscal year), is because of what happened to Red Dead Online. It failed to explode like Grand Theft Auto Online, though Rockstar’s monetization practices certainly didn’t help. Over time, its various issues and lack of content continued to spiral, with more players lost, resulting in even less support as time passed.
You could argue that the same thing won’t happen to Grand Theft Auto 6 because, well, it’s Grand Theft Auto 6. At best, Rockstar and Take-Two could pull a Destiny and leave servers available for GTA Online while it focuses most of its resources on the follow-up. At worst, they could shut it down, directing players (and their recurrent spending) to the sequel.
It may not be the most liked move, but considering all the microtransactions and other issues in GTA Online over the years and how popular it remains, this may be one that Take-Two is comfortable with. After all, the end of support for Destiny 1 didn’t stop many players from jumping over to Destiny 2. Then again, the lackluster release of Payday 3 did cause most players to stick with Payday 2, so it cuts both ways.
While GTA Online users won’t have to hit the panic button just yet – or maybe for years after GTA 6 launches – it’s interesting to see where it could go. Perhaps Rockstar is playing things by ear, committing to an extensive GTA Online 2 but not fully mapping out the future. Maybe it has a whole new approach to Grand Theft Auto 6, which doesn’t segregate the single-player and online modes, instead combining them for a shared world experience that players can enable whenever they want.
That would allow updating the base game and adding new single-player content while ensuring multiplayer fans have something to keep them busy. Regardless of the future, GTA Online isn’t getting younger, and whether it’s vintage enough to survive in the coming years from competition within its own home remains to be seen.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.
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