Along with ARC Raiders, games like Battlefield 6, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Dispatch, and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 were also among the top releases in the charts. Some older games could also be seen, with 2023’s Baldur’s Gate 3, 2020’s Cyberpunk 2077, and 2013’s Grand Theft Auto 5 also being represented, albeit with its Enhanced Edition release.

Valve has also seen continued success with the Steam Deck, with SteamDB ranking the handheld gaming PC as the second-best-selling Steam item, just under ARC Raiders. Check out the list below.

Embark Studios itself hasn’t revealed recent sales data for ARC Raiders, rumours from back in November indicated that it was close to hitting 7 million sales just a month after its release.

ARC Raiders art director Robert Sammelin had recently spoken about Embark Studios’ plans to support the extraction shooter for “the longest time.” In an interview from last month, he noted that the studio has a 10-year plan and that as long as players continue to engage with the title, support will continue.

“Our ambition is to keep this game alive for the longest time. It is a live game,” said Sammelin. “It’s something that we want to keep alive for the longest time possible, as long as players engage with it and have fun and see that it is evolving in a good way.”

The art director also spoke about how the community of ARC Raiders plays a vital role in the game’s evolution, since a major reason for the extraction shooter’s success hinges on how players interact with each other.

“I think games like this will evolve depending on community behaviours, feedback, and how we pick out the things we see people engage really well with. But also throw things into the mix that sort of afford new challenges and opportunities within the game,” he explained.

“I think there’s a wide range of routes that we can take with this, and time will tell how we sort of dig into it. But we for sure have a pretty long-standing plan of where we want to take it.”

As part of the studio’s plans to support ARC Raiders, the Cold Snap update was released last month, bringing with it a new Winter-themed weather condition which also affects gameplay by prompting players to seek shelter (or die trying). It also affects visibility and movement, making some surfaces much more challenging to traverse.

ARC Raiders is available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. For more details, check out our review. Also check out our guide on all ARC machines and how you can beat them in battle.

Top ten best-sellers on Steam from December 23 to December 30:

1. ARC Raiders
2. Steam Deck
3. Battlefield 6
4. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
5. Baldur’s Gate 3
6. EA Sports FC 26
7. Dispatch
8. Cyberpunk 2077
9. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2
10. Grand Theft Auto 5 Enhanced

With the release of the update, Grand Theft Auto 5 Enhanced players can now enhance their vehicles further with Drift Tuning Upgrades on four more vehicles – the Bravado Gauntlet Hellfire (Muscle), Annis Hardy (Sedan), Vapid Dominator FX (Muscle), and Dinka Chavos V6 (Sedan) by visiting either Hao’s Special Works inside the Los Santos Car Meet, or The Vinewood Club Garage Vehicle Workshop, with the latter only being available to GTA+ members.

For players that might not have these for vehicles, they are currently on display in the Premium Deluxe Motorsport Showroom. A host of vehicles have also been made available at discounts, ranging from 30 percent off for the Higgins Helitours or the Dinka Jester RR, to all the way up to 50 percent off for the Declasse Drift Yosemite or the Vapid Dominator FX.

The update is also bringing with it bonuses to events associated with the Los Santos Car Meet. Competing in the LS Car Meet Series will reward players with twice the amount of GTA$, RP and LS Car Meet Rep than what they would usually get. Other sources of LS Car Meet Rep have also been doubled, and winning three LS Car Meet races will reward players an extra GTA$100,000 thanks to an associated Weekly Challenge.

These extra rewards and discounts will end when Drift Week comes to a close on August 21.

Going into further details about the addition of DLSS 4 to Grand Theft Auto 5 Enhanced on PC, Rockstar has confirmed that the game now boasts support for multi frame generation for better frame rates in both Grand Theft Auto 5 as well as Grand Theft Auto Online. It is worth noting that, while other DLSS 4 benefits like image upscaling will be available to most players on Nvidia GeForce RTX graphics cards, frame generation and multi frame generation will only be available for those running the title on Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 40-series or 50-series graphics cards.

The addition of DLSS 4 comes just a couple of months after the last major update to Grand Theft Auto 5 which, along with gameplay improvements like the addition of money laundering operations, also brought more ray tracing options to the title. These options allowed players to get even better lighting in the game’s world by allowing players to enable a second ray bounce. An option for high resolution ray traced reflections was also added in the same update.

Grand Theft Auto 5 Enhanced is available on PC, bringing the title up to similar graphical and performance standards as the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions of the title. Enhanced is available as a free update for anyone that owns Grand Theft Auto 5 Legacy on Steam.

As out of left field as it sounds, Grand Theft Auto 5 Enhanced and Expanded finally coming to PC provided the same feeling. Referred to Grand Theft Auto 5 Enhanced, it launched to some…mixed user reviews on Steam. How mixed? Out of 12,757 user reviews at this time, only 51 percent are positive. It peaked at 187,059 concurrent players shortly after release and averaged a little over 159,000 players in the last 24 hours, so clearly people are playing.

However, the impression among many fans, especially the longtime Grand Theft Auto Online fans that you’re trying to appeal to ranges from “negative” to an overwhelming “meh.”

Maybe it’s because the content arrives about three years later and isn’t considered all that substantial. Hao’s Special Works is a nice addition to the game, with 25 different cars to upgrade and special liveries if you win enough races. PC players even get five brand-new vehicles that haven’t been available till now, though you have to wonder how worthwhile that may be. After all, they’ve received plenty of new vehicles, and assorted craft through updates.

At least the revamped Landing Page looks good, and the new Career Builder helps ease new players in while getting them into the fun stuff faster. On the other hand, longtime players have faced different issues, particularly with migrating their progress from the original release (aka Grand Theft Auto 5 Legacy). Story Mode seems to carry over well enough, allowing players to appreciate the visual enhancements (such as they are, but we’ll get to that), but those on GTA Online are having no luck.

The other problem is Grand Theft Auto 5 Enhanced exists as its own game. Don’t get me wrong: From a specifications point of view, this makes perfect sense. The Legacy version launched in April 2015 and recommends a GTX 660 and a third-generation Core i5. It’s an easy choice for those with less powerful hardware, so why mess with that audience by making this a mandatory update?

However, even if the migration issue is resolved, there’s the problem of splitting your audience. Those with the Enhanced version can’t play GTA Online with Legacy owners. If you’re on the former but your friends are stuck on the latter due to hardware limits, you can’t play together. Of course, you could always maintain two separate installations – one for the Enhanced version to enjoy all the new features and the other for Legacy to team up with your pals.

Two saves with separate progressions and one nagging feeling about the point of it all. At least you can still play with randoms online, right? However, text chat has also been removed, so you better get on the microphone if you want even the slightest chance of success in heists.

But surely you can’t be too hard on a free upgrade for current owners? Rockstar has even discounted a bundle containing the Legacy and Enhanced editions with the Criminal Enterprise Starter Pack by 50 percent. The latter gives you numerous properties, vehicles and weapons alongside GTA$10,000,000. What a deal…except many have reported not receiving items from the Starter Pack, so that’s one more issue to add to the pile.

However, all of this aside, it’s a free upgrade. Just ignoring all the problems, it lets you play Grand Theft Auto 5 on PC with ray-traced reflections and shadows, AMD FSR 1 and 3 or DLSS, and faster loading times. Surely, that must count for something, right?

Well, yes, but also no. The PC version of Enhanced also packs in ray-traced ambient occlusion and global illumination, and the results are pretty good. While it can be largely unnoticeable in some interiors, watching sunlight pouring through an archway and realistically illuminating the area, bringing out its colors all the more, is pretty great.

However, the ray-traced reflections are a different matter. While they can look good in several scenarios – admiring skyscrapers or the shiny hoods of sportscars – there’s a certain blurriness in their quality. Also, many buildings don’t use ray-traced reflections, utilize the Legacy version’s reflection system or lack reflections altogether. And as gorgeous as the game can look during a rainy night, the reflections in certain water bodies look inaccurate.

On the bright side, at least Rockstar fixed an issue capping the frame rate at 120 FPS and DLSS performance is solid (even if MSAA is much better quality). Loading times are also improved by a few seconds in Story Mode. And hey, for what it’s worth, GTA+, Rockstar’s subscription service, is seemingly working without a hitch. If all the microtransactions in GTA Online weren’t enough already, you can pay even more to the company. Talk about generosity! Considering all the other issues, its addition stings all the more for PC players.

The final verdict for Grand Theft Auto 5 Enhanced? If you’ve never played the base game, have a good rig, and are comfortable with using your mic in GTA Online (and quickly finding out why text chat is better), it’s worth checking out. Grand Theft Auto 5’s story is still one of the very best in video games, with memorable characters and an involving plot as lovingly over-the-top as it is satirically biting.

There’s also a stunning open world to explore, with so much enjoyable content and incredible attention to detail that will catch your eye. This was true over a decade ago when the game first launched and even more so when the PC version arrived later. You could argue that this is even superior to the Xbox Series X/S and PS5 versions, with ray-traced AO and GI making the world look more natural, lived-in and breath-taking than ever.

If you’re a longtime owner, then maybe it’s worth downloading to check out the lighting changes in single-player. Drive around Los Santos, seeing the better side of the reflections (just don’t look too closely at them), maybe doing a fresh playthrough.

For GTA Online players, the hassle of migrating your progress over isn’t worth it right now, and you can’t even play with Legacy friends. The latest update, Oscar Guzman Flies Again, might be worth checking out because beyond making specific cars faster in Hao’s Special Works and partaking in some races, there isn’t much new content in the Enhanced version.

You can go either way on whether the three-year wait was worth it because, before this, all eyes were on Rockstar to provide an update on Grand Theft Auto 6. A new trailer, new details, anything. Instead, they received a grim reminder of Rockstar’s desire for more cash, its reputation for problematic upgrades, the apparent disdain that it has for PC players (if the lack of a PC version for GTA 6 wasn’t enough), and its constant milking of a game that’s beyond tapped.

Unfortunately, PC players aren’t exactly thrilled about some new features, while others face issues. Here are several things you should know about Grand Theft Auto 5 Enhanced on PC and whether it’s worth revisiting Los Santos.

PC Requirements

As noted, Grand Theft Auto 5 Enhanced is a separate product – the original game is now Grand Theft Auto 5 Legacy and retains the same settings and hardware requirements. However, several minimum and recommended specs are higher for the Enhanced edition. You need a solid-state drive with 105 GB installation space with the minimum requirements including a Core i7-4770 or AMD FX-9590, 8 GB RAM, and a GTX 1630 (4GB VRAM) or a Radeon RX 6400 (4GB VRAM).

The recommended requirements include a Core i5-9600K or Ryzen 5 3600, 16 GB RAM, and an RTX 3060 (8GB VRAM) or a Radeon RX 6600XT (8GB VRAM). An SSD with DirectStorage compatibility is also necessary. Despite the mandated SSD, reports indicate that load times aren’t much different from the Legacy version.

Hao’s Special Works

One of the more significant new additions with the Enhanced version is Hao’s Special Works, available in Grand Theft Auto Online’s Los Santos Car Meet. Players can take certain vehicles and install Performance Upgrades to make them even faster. There are 20 such cars already available in the PC version – including the Bravado Banshee GTS and Grotti Itali GTO Stinger TT – which meet these requirements, so you can start upgrading them immediately.

New Vehicles

But that’s not all. Five new vehicles previously exclusive to PS5 and Xbox Series X/S are now available for PC players and also eligible for Performance Upgrades – the Coil Cyclone 2 Supercar, the Imponte Arbiter GT Muscle car, the Karin S95 Sports car, the Pfister Astron Custom SUV and the Pegassi Weaponized Ignus Supercar. It’s also worth noting that Hao’s Special Works will alter the look of all upgradeable vehicles, adding a sleeker, more colorful appeal.

HSW Race Series

Cruising through Los Santos and “accidentally” forgetting to avoid pedestrians is neat, but what if you want to test these upgraded vehicles against other players? Hao’s Special Works Race Series is the ticket, offering 20 races exclusive to upgraded vehicles, encompassing locations like Los Santos Port, San Chianski Mountains, Vinewood, Los Santos International Airport, and much more. These races support up to eight players.

HSW Time Trials

If solo play is more your speed, then maybe Hao’s Special Works Time Trials will suffice. There are eight in total, with three par times to beat, depending on the vehicle class. Complete all of them, and you can earn a special livery, “HSW Elite,” which can be applied to your upgraded vehicles.

Career Builder

Instead of creating a character and hopping into the tutorial for GTA Online, there’s now the Career Builder. On top of granting you GTA$4,000,000, it gives you multiple career paths: Executive, Gunrunner, or Biker. From there, you can buy a property to serve as your base and various weapons, vehicles, and more that will help the cause. So whether it’s arms trading,  management, or new missions, there’s much to pursue for first-time criminals.

New Landing Page

One of the other major changes to GTA Online is the revamped Landing Page. It lays out all the important content – from new vehicles, Heists, and Hao’s Special Works – and also informs players about everything new. If you’re a new player, it’s a decent way to ease newcomers in or returning players without getting lost in the vast swathes of content available. You might want to think twice about Heists, though, because…

Removal of Text Chat

If you are a GTA Online player and have utilized text chat for communication, there’s bad news – it’s removed in the Enhanced edition on PC. Rockstar hasn’t given any reason for this, touting kernel-based anti-cheat and voice chat moderation as improvements before the Enhanced version went live. It also hasn’t acknowledged the issue, but if you’re someone who doesn’t care for voice chat, maybe think twice before pursuing any co-op activities that require coordination.

Ray-Tracing

The current-gen versions officially brought ray-traced shadows and reflections to Grand Theft Auto 5, which carry over into the Enhanced version on PC. However, the latter also includes ray-traced ambient occlusion and global illumination, ensuring more naturally lit environments based on impressions thus far (though the difference isn’t earth-shattering).

The problem is with the reflections – while they can look good on vehicles and some buildings, players have complained of a lack of sharpness. Certain buildings also don’t have ray-traced reflections while the quality of reflections on water bodies is either underwhelming or incorrect.

Story Mode and Online Migration

For those with thousands of hours in the Legacy version over the years or who want to see how Story Mode looks with the visual improvements, it’s possible to migrate progress to the Enhanced edition. However, it doesn’t seem to be working for GTA Online, with players informed that the profile associated with the Rockstar Games account isn’t currently eligible for migration. Rockstar hasn’t acknowledged this issue, but it is assisting those who can’t log in or who have seen their online saves disappear.

Upscaling Support

Grand Theft Auto 5 Enhanced supports AMD FSR 1 and 3 alongside Nvidia DLSS 3. The latter is considered the ideal option (though it’s not universally beloved). Some players recommend MSAA for better quality, even if it’s much more demanding. Frame Generation isn’t currently available but Rockstar said it will be added sometime in the future.

Higher Frame Rates

Outside of ray tracing, upscaling, and so on, the upgrade brings higher frame rates, aspect ratios and resolutions to PC players. While it initially launched with a 120 frames per second cap, Rockstar has since released a patch addressing this. It seemingly occurred when setting Frame Limit to off. With the issue fixed, players are reporting frame rates of 170 to 180 FPS, though the upper limit (if it exists) is unknown.

DualSense Support

If you enjoyed the feeling of the DualSense’s Adaptive Triggers, good news – they’re now supported with the Enhanced version on PC. Some players reported that aim assist isn’t working in GTA Online but you actually need to enter Story Mode and change it there.

GTA+

Amid complaints about the ray tracing, lack of frame rate options, and migration issues, there’s at least one silver lining – GTA+ is now officially available for PC players. This month’s subscription includes the new Principe Deveste Eight Supercar for free (packed with a Performance Upgrade), two liveries for the same, and other cosmetics. You can even buy the new McKenzie Field Hanger added with the Oscar Guzman Flies Again update for 30 percent off. What a steal!

While there are quite a few positive reviews for the title, the negative reviews are in the majority. Complaints in user reviews largely revolve around a few technical issues, like HDR not working for some and migration troubles.

On the other hand, several positive reviews also praise Grand Theft Auto 5 Enhanced for the visual upgrades that it brought to the ageing open-world title, as well as it being a free upgrade for players who already owned the original.

Despite this, however, the release ultimately seems to have been quite successful. In its first day alone, Grand Theft Auto 5 Enhanced has managed to hit a 24-hour peak of 187,059 concurrent players at the time of writing. This essentially makes it the second-most played game right now as of data from SteamDB.

Grand Theft Auto 5 Enhanced was released as a free update for all GTA 5 owners on PC. It brings all the enhancements from the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions with players able to migrate all of their story and GTA Online progress into the Enhanced version.

It also brought with it new vehicles, as well as new activities like the Wildlife Photography Challenge. It also makes the on-ramp for new GTA Online players gentler by offering GTA$4,000,000 to start out with.

Grand Theft Auto 5 has generally proven to be incredibly successful for Rockstar as well as publisher Take-Two Interactive. It revealed back in February that the open-world game had sold more than 210 million copies since its 2013 release. This pushed cumulative sales across the GTA franchise up to 440 million units.

Red Dead Redemption 2, also hit an incredible milestone. While not as successful as GTA 5, the open-world western has sold 70 million copies worldwide, with total series sales crossing the 95 million copies mark.

In the meantime, Rockstar is hard at work trying to hit its Fall 2025 release window for Grand Theft Auto 6. While the anticipation surrounding it is no secret, Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick believes it will be big enough to cause “a meaningful uptick” in console hardware sales.

“When you have a big title in the market, and we have many of them coming, historically that has sold consoles,” Zelnick said in February. “And I think that will happen this year. I don’t think tariffs are going to be our friend, but I think there will be a meaningful uptick in console sales in calendar 25 because of the release schedule, not just coming from us, but coming from others.”

Grand Theft Auto 6 is being developed for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Corsair Gaming recently claimed that the PC version could arrive in early 2026. However, it’s since clarified this to be speculation.