Let GTA 5 Go Already

Categories

Fortnite

Let GTA 5 Go Already

Categories

GTA 5 came out almost a decade ago and has been ported numerous times, it's time to let it rest. And yes, that does include GTA Online too.

Grand Theft Auto 5 first released in 2013, and it’s about time Rockstar stopped milking it for all it’s worth. Other than Red Dead Redemption 2, which itself is four years old, the company hasn’t released anything except ports and smaller projects in almost a decade. Rockstar's incredibly detailed games take a long time to craft, but the developer has appeared singularly focused on profit. GTA 5's single-player has hardly received a substantial update since the game came out, despite one being promised years ago. A recent update called The Contract could be seen as an exception, but its content can only be accessed in GTA Online. This perfectly exemplifies the issue with GTA 5. Since release, GTA Online has completely overshadowed the rest of the game it was bundled with.

Categories

Constant support for the multiplayer mode has kept the game going for all this time, and has made GTA 5 the most profitable entertainment product ever, which explains why Rockstar is unsurprisingly clinging to this game for so long. It also explains the decision to go all in on GTA Online and milk that cash cow in any way possible, including porting it over to the next two console generations and even making it free-to-play for a limited time on the PS5 and Xbox Series X. Rockstar wanted to expand the game’s audience so even more people would end up paying for microtransactions. With most new items costing obscene amounts of money, buying a Shark Card or two seems a lot more palatable in a game gotten for free. There is also now the controversial GTA+ paid membership for GTA Online to further monetize the game. Perhaps the biggest reason that the extended lifespan of GTA 5 seems so weird is because the series was originally no stranger to annual releases. GTA 3, Vice City and San Andreas all came out in a span of four years. Games of course take longer to develop now, so larger gaps are expected, but Los Santos has become stale after all this time - at least this modern incarnation has. A new game that introduced a new locale or revisited one of the older ones would have been a great way to keep things fresh, perhaps it could have still linked to GTA Online or had its own equivalent.

Seemingly legitimate leaks of the next entry in the GTA series are currently flying around. Over 90 videos of GTA 6 have leaked, including numerous details about the story and gameplay. These leaks also suggest that the next game may be coming in the next couple of years. It’s reasonable to assume that, whatever its story mode involves, there will be an online mode to rival GTA Online. Ideally, this will not come at the cost of effectively shunning the single-player content as it so clearly has in GTA 5. With no official word on when the next game in the series will release, it’s safe to assume that it won’t be coming out for a little while. Until then, Rockstar will continue to squeeze life out of GTA Online until it is a withered husk. Hopefully, the whole Grand Theft Auto 5 package is put out of its misery sooner rather than later.