Generally, when a gaming franchise gets a new entry, players will flock to the shiny, new title rather than hang back and continue playing the old ones. However, this is not always the case, especially when the “old” title in question is Grand Theft Auto Online.
GTA Online has been around for over 10 years, and it’s been receiving updates and constant attention the entire time. It’s got a loyal player base, and those players are more than willing to continue paying for new content. With that, it’s no wonder that those players who still invest time and money into the game want to know what’s going to happen after GTA 6 launches.
However, there’s good news. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick spoke with IGN regarding the future of GTA Online, and while he wasn’t able to comment on that project because it hasn’t been announced yet, he used 2K Online as an example.
“Generally speaking, we support our properties when the consumers are involved with those titles,” Zelnick said. While he used vague language, the point he made seems as clear as GTA 6’s inevitable release. While there are still players interested in paying for content, they’re not looking to take that content away.
A key word here is the term “consumers.” While there may be millions of players who are interested in sticking with the old GTA Online, if they’re not paying for anything, it doesn’t provide much value to the company in charge of the content. That might sound a bit cruel, but the reality of the gaming industry is that it’s a business, and businesses have to make money.
Zelnick followed by saying Take-Two has “shown a willingness to support legacy titles when a community wants to be engaged with them.” While this is by no means a decisive confirmation, it seems more than likely that when GTA 6 launches, players will still be able to enjoy the current iteration of GTA Online that they’ve already dedicated so much time to.
Grand Theft Auto isn’t the only franchise to support old games
While this is speaking directly about the Grand Theft Auto franchise, similar trends appear with other franchises as well. Call of Duty is a perfect example of this, but possibly for different reasons than GTA Online.
Ay the time of writing, there’s still an average of nearly three million active players in Modern Warfare 3, even though Black Ops 6 was released in October. Even Modern Warfare 2 has nearly 1.5 million players per day on average on Steam. It’s not unheard of in the least for players to decide to continue playing older games when something new comes along.
This could be for a multitude of reasons, but a big one is that “new” doesn’t always translate to “better.” Sometimes, it’s more worthwhile for players to hold off on buying a new game because there are game-breaking issues that could be avoided by just sticking with something tried and true.
Payday 3 served as a perfect example of this, launching with an array of issues that caused the game to be nearly unplayable at launch. Players decided to continue playing the decade-old Payday 2 because it was already established as being a game worth people’s time.
GTA 6 could easily be a similar situation. It’s expected to be massive in both scale and ambition, which unfortunately leaves ample room for mistakes. GTA Online players who have been around since the beginning will remember that GTA 5 had no shortage of issues in its infancy, but once those were resolved, it became a game that maintained popularity for more than a decade.
While there’s still no official word on whether GTA Online will remain active once GTA 6 launches, the lack of announcement for the new entry implies that Rockstar likely won’t shut down the servers for the old title on such short notice. Still, players will have to wait and see just how long they can stay in Los Santos before being relocated to Vice City.
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