With Grand Theft Auto 6 scheduled for launch later this year, players of Grand Theft Auto Online have been worried about losing all the content they paid money for in the game once the new release comes out with its own version of GTA Online. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has revealed, however, that support for the original GTA Online will continue in some form.
While he didn’t offer specific details, Zelnick spoke about the publisher’s willingness to support its older titles, as long as there is still interest in the player base. As an example, Zelnick pointed to NBA 2K Online – a China-exclusive online game launched back in 2012 – which was followed up by the 2017 launch of NBA 2K Online 2. The servers for both titles are still live.
“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,” Zelnick said to IGN. “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 Zelnick has a point in that particular instance, publisher Take-Two has also shown a willingness to shut down the servers for some of its older titles in order to promote newer releases in the franchise. A prime example of this would be this year’s closure of the WWE 2K23 servers, which brought an end to multiplayer as well as community creations. This was done in order to get players that want to focus on multiplayer to move to the more recent WWE 2K24, or wait for the upcoming WWE 2K25.
When it comes to GTA Online itself, things could go either way. Both the publisher, as well as developer Rockstar Games have invested quite a bit of time and money into the game to add tonnes of content over the years. Interestingly, Red Dead Online is also still live, despite never reaching the heights of popularity that its GTA cousin did.
A recent report has indicated that GTA 6 would have some sort of emphasis on user-generated content. What this means for the title, and whether we’ll see the user-generated content also show up in the follow-up to GTA Online, is currently unknown. Developer Rockstar has seemingly been in talks with the companies behind Fortnite and Roblox, both of which have quite a bit of support for user-generated content.
Grand Theft Auto 6 is slated for release some time in Fall this year. The game is currently in development for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. There has been no solid announcement yet of a potential PC release of the game. Recent rumours, however, have indicated that we might see the open-world title come to PC in early 2026.
