GTA Online is no longer officially supported by Steam Deck, thanks to the introduction of some anti-cheat software which can, in fact, be made compatible with Steam Deck. Say what now?
]]>We've had the enshittification of Google, Facebook and the public internet at large, now for the enshittification of GTA Online. What do you mean, "it was enshittified to start with"? Take it to the comments please, because first I need to tell you about the latest GTA Online update, which allows you to collect cash accumulated in safes, request vehicles and replenish ammo using your in-game phone - but only if you pay up $8 or $7 a month for a GTA+ subscription, which is currently not available on PC.
]]>As a somewhat deflating example of the money-churning might of GTA Online becoming the sole focus of Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto 5 efforts over the last decade, the actor who played Trevor in the ridiculously well-selling crime epic has teased some details of planned story DLC that would have turned the controversial protagonist into a James Bond-style spy. The pack supposedly got as far as shooting with the actors, only to end up cancelled and folded into a GTA Online heist.
]]>The PC and console market grew by 2.6% to $93.5 billion in revenue last year, according to a new report by video games date company Newzoo (cheers, Kotaku!) That’s good, right? Growth is universally a good thing, otherwise all those nice, dead-eyed men in suits wouldn’t keep saying it was. You can’t just lie about growth, that’s a business crime. However, here’s some slightly more worrying news, depending on how much you value new ideas: Of all the game time that gamers spent gaming in quantifiable Big Year for Gaming 2023, just 20% of that time was gamed on games other than the 66 specific games mentioned in the report.
]]>When first I played GTA Online back in the Xbox 360 days it felt like an afterthought, a chance to play some random good-for-nothing in GTA 5's sizzling alt-Los Angeles, securely cloistered away from the events of the all-important singleplayer story. Having built yourself a no-name crim, you galloped around cranking out cash and XP by means of glorified sidequests handed down by headliners such as Lamar. Skip forward to 2023, and as Alice0 observed when we discussed Rockstar's GTA 6 announcements this morning, GTA Online is effectively an MMO with ten years of updates, expansions and community projects under its belt. The no-name crim has become the star attraction.
]]>A few weeks ago I wrote about Grand Theft Auto players describing the movement of planes in random GTA promotional art as evidence of a forthcoming GTA 6 reveal, timed to intersect with the waning gibbous moon. I thought that the furore might die down after GTA 6 failed to materialise in accordance with the lunar cycle, but it turns out this rabbit hole has no bottom.
Come now, gaze upon the above, just-posted Rockstar promotional image for a new Red Dead Online outfit. To my eye, that picture looks like a weird dude in a mask, gazing at you through piles of skulls. Standard Halloween gamer fare. But it turns out that when you draw lines on it using MS Paint, you end up with the below.
]]>Rockstar are about to properly announce Grand Theft Auto VI, going by some hectic speculation surrounding a TwiX image for GTA Online's upcoming in-game Red Happy Moon Tee festival. A child in the ways of the internet might glance at said image and merely conclude that if you play GTA Online at any point this week, you can scoop up a seasonal cosmetic. But look again with unclouded eyes, young one. What does your heart say to you?
]]>A fix is on the way for the security vulnerabilities discovered earlier this week in Grand Theft Auto Online, Rockstar have said today. Players began efforts to alert Rockstar to the issues en masse over the weekend, after some nefarious types took advantage of the issues to disrupt the game for other people. Rockstar Support have tweeted that a security-related update is coming, but didn't give a specific timeframe for it yet.
]]>Grand Theft Auto Online players on PC are reporting corrupted accounts and being locked out of their games due to remote code exploits that are being abused by modders. Rockstar-focused Twitter account Tez2 highlighted the issue at the end of last week, before news of the situation spread onto the GTA Online subreddit. Rockstar Support hasn’t officially acknowledged any potential the exploits have to affect GTA Online players and their accounts, although Tez2 claimed that the company were already aware of what was going on.
]]>Grand Theft Auto Online’s been around for the best part of a decade, but you can now become a taxi driver at long last. You’ll probably need to do some light robbery to afford to buy a taxi from Warstock Cache & Carry for the most authentic cab driver experience. Still, it’s relatively straightforward to start your latest, and uncharacteristically honest, money making venture. If you don’t have a taxi then you can still start taxi work jobs, and completing 10 in a row unlocks the cheaper trade price to nab a legit taxi. You can even call a cab from your iFruit phone to fast travel, if you don’t fancy driving your own.
]]>You know that bit in The Matrix where Neo says he needs lots of guns, and racks of them pop out of nowhere? Well, Grand Theft Auto Online’s latest addition is the Gun Van, and it’s going for a similar vibe. You can flag down the entrepreneurial van driver to buy pieces from a weekly rotating selection of what Rockstar calls “top-of-the-line weapons, ammunition, and armor”. It’s pretty much just the GTA equivalent of an ice cream truck, but for guns. Witness a short snippet of the Gun Van in action below.
]]>Hear that? Christmas bells are ringing, carolers are caroling, and GTA Online players are being pounced on by an atrociously-named Grinch parody. He's one of several Christmas treats now stocked on the streets of Los Santos, which also pack snowmen to destroy, rooftop shootouts and, for some reason, superpowered beasts getting chased by serial killers.
]]>Last time, you decided by a narrow margin that becoming overpowered is better than a chunky manual. With no chunky manual to teach you a game's systems, I guess you'll be busy experimenting with that for a while. This week, I've had a queer fancy to (for once) make you pick between things which have absolutely no connection. What's better: seasonal events, or dynamic snow? I know, it's a bit of a silly choice, but hey, it's the last week of work before Christmas, let's goof off.
]]>GTA Online has kicked off the Los Santos Drug Wars, launching six new story missions where you help some hippies chase down the equipment they need to set up a mobile acid lab in their truck. I say hippies, I mean bloodthirsty thugs who happen to like psychedelics.
The update has also increased security for the popular Cayo Perico heist, which was one of the main ways people earned their money, so folks are understandably grumpy. Maybe they can sell some acid instead?
]]>Rockstar have teased a new story update coming to GTA Online next week, which pits players against a ramshackle bunch of rival drug dealers. The Los Santos Drug Wars kick off on December 13th with the first part of the update. The short post on Rockstar’s Newswire blog isn't exactly awash with details at the moment, but it does give an idea about the kind of dodgy characters and shenanigans you’ll get to encounter, including an angry looking luchador and the return of GTA 5’s Nervous Ron.
]]>Grand Theft Auto Online players are forbidden from using the game’s roleplay servers for “commercial exploitation”, according to new guidelines set out by developers Rockstar which includes selling loot boxes, virtual currencies, corporate sponsorships, and anything to do with cryptocurrencies and NFTs. Sorry, crypto bros. The ban on crypto and NFTs echoes Mojang’s statement from this summer scuppering players who wanted to incorporate the controversial technologies into Minecraft.
]]>GTA Online’s month-long Heists event concludes on November 30th, and Rockstar are setting the game’s community a challenge to steal a total of $2 trillion in-game over the next week. That would be double what GTA Online players managed during the last Heists Challenge two years ago, when the target was set at the much lower amount of $100 billion. Rockstar are promising a “special reward” later this year if the community hits that $2 trillion total in stolen cash. Buy out Twitter in time for Christmas, maybe?
]]>More information about Rockstar’s next Grand Theft Auto game has slipped out of a new report from Bloomberg. Staff at the company spoke about how the cultural changes that have been taking place since former head Dan Houser’s infamous 100-hour working week comments in 2018 have affected the game’s development, with sources saying GTA 6 will apparently have a playable female protagonist for the first time in the series' history. It sounds like we might have quite some time to wait to play it though, so watch the trailer for GTA Online’s new Criminal Enterprises update below to sate your appetite for misdemeanours.
]]>It’s a good time to be bad. At least, that’s what GTA Online’s Criminal Enterprises update coming July 26th would have us think. Not only does the update offer some fresh opportunities to make money for all kinds of criminals, but there’s also some changes requested by the GTA Online community inbound too. Check out your options by watching the trailer below.
]]>The game I've done the most virtuacycling in is named after a whole other form of transport, but it is also a great place to ride a bike. When I'm visiting Grand Theft Auto Online for funsies, just to watch mayhem unfold, I like to do it atop a BMX. Sure, everyone in Los Santos wants to murder me, but players are a little friendlier when you're pulling sikk tricks. A little.
]]>Need to know this week's Podium Car in GTA Online? Once per day you can head down to GTA Online's Diamond Casino to spin the Lucky Wheel. Spins reward you with an array of fabulous prizes. The most coveted among them is the podium car, a rotating prize vehicle that you can walk away with for cheap. At around 1 in 20 odds, you probably won't win every week, but when you do, you will make out like a bandit. Check out this week's top prize below.
]]>Need some of the best cheap cars in Grand Theft Auto Online? If you are a new or returning player checking out the next-gen console release of GTA Online, you’re probably looking for some affordable wheels to help you navigate the online sandbox. There are a plethora of options after all these years, with dozens of wildly expensive supercars for players to chase. However, we all have to start somewhere. If you need a car under a million bucks to get you started, we’ve got you covered.
]]>Want to know which is the fastest car in GTA Online? The giant playground of Los Santos is chock full of vehicles after almost a decade of updates, and the choices can be outright overwhelming. Of course, speed is the first stat many players will look at, and why shouldn’t it be? GTA Online is a sandbox, and the first thing we all do in a driving sandbox is floor it. If you’re ready to top out your speedometer, look no further than our list of the fastest cars in GTA Online.
]]>Ever since Grand Theft Auto V launched eight years ago, fans have pleaded for Rockstar to release a singleplayer expansion, and received only multiplayer additions. Well, they still haven't announced more singleplayer GTAV, but today they did announce one of the singleplayer stars will return in multiplayer. The next GTA Online update, named The Contract, will focus on campaign co-star Franklin, now running a 'fixer' agency and needs our help dealing with a big client, Dr. Dre. Yup, it's the D-R-E, and he's bringing unreleased new music with him.
]]>What are Rockstar launching this week? No, it isn't Grand Theft Auto V on another platform. It's also not another nightclub inside of GTA Online, but that is warmer. Rockstar have actually partnered with club music event hosts CircoLoco to launch CircoLoco Records. Yes, in real life, not in GTA. The label's first compliation record, Monday Dreamin’, releases on July 9th but they've already debuted the first track off the album.
]]>The seemingly endless loading times of GTA Online will soon become less loathsome, because Rockstar have confirmed they're implementing a fix for an issue found by a player. At the end of February, someone known as "t0st" had a good rummage in GTA's code to figure out why Online loaded so much slower than singleplayer, and came up with a solution that made it 70% faster on their PC. Well, Rockstar say they've investigated, confirmed the issue, and made some changes we'll see in a future patch. Amazing scenes.
Update: It might now be live? Surprise!
]]>GTA Online has historically been a stingy game. Making money s largely a grind to afford better tools to grind more efficiently, with the dream of one day maybe actually buying something fancy just for funsies. That grind became a bit friendlier in December with the launch of the Cayo Perico Heist, a mission to rob the party island of drug lord Juan "El Rubio" Strickler. It's so lucrative that many players can now buying the game's novelty superyachts, and as thanks (or insult to injury?) to El Rubio, some name them in his honour. Not a huge thing, but always makes me smile.
]]>While I do occasionally dabble in GTA Online, the problem keeping me from playing more isn't the endless grind for money, it's the endless wait for loading. Five minutes or longer on an SSD seems ludicrous. While many (myself included) have assumed the wait is related to its peer-to-peer lobbies, one intrepid player has been rooting around in the code and discovered it might actually be something quite different. And their tweaking supposedly managed to cut load times by 70%. I'm wary of jumping to conclusions, but god I'd kill for faster loading.
]]>A whole new Caribbean island has arrived in GTA Online with the launch of The Cayo Perico Heist today, inviting us to completely rinse the drug lord El Rubio. Yes, sadly, his party island is only for the heist, not a place we can visit any time. It's an intriguing heist though, and one we can actually complete solo for once. And we get our own submarine. Also, Dr Dre pops up for like 30 seconds.
]]>Grand Theft Auto Online players are in store for another heist next week that'll take you off to a warm island crimecation. Rockstar have revealed more about the Cayo Perico heist in a new trailer proving that this island does indeed conform to the one true purpose for privately-owned islands: hosting absolute ragers for dudes with more money than sense. You'll be captaining a new submarine to launch your heist from when it arrives next week.
]]>Rockstar have finally tipped their hand on the big, new heist they have planned for GTA Online, which they've previously said would take you crime lot to a whole new location. No, it's not Vice City, but you will be leaving Los Santos. The Cayo Perico Heist will send you off to a drug lord's private island and you can even fly solo if you like.
]]>It's great fun to pootle around GTA Online, taking in the sights and doing casual crimes. It's less fun to grind the millions of virtuabucks you need for cool crimetoys and hot crimefashion, especially when Rockstar also sell the in-game cash for real money and it can sure feel like they're pushing you to buy. But, good news: this week they're offering a chance to get one million in-game dollars for free, just by logging in. It's worth doing even if you're not currently playing, what with the "biggest ever update" promised later this year.
]]>2K's Borderlands 3 still costs £50. Rockstar's seven year-old GTA V costs £25. Just some food for thought. Anyways, Take-Two Interactive, the mega corporation who own the likes of 2K and Rockstar, think they're charging players a lot less than their games are worth.
"We deliver the highest quality experiences in the business, and we charge much less for them than we believe they're worth to consumers," CEO Strauss Zelnick said in Take-Two's earnings call yesterday.
]]>I don't know what's more surprising: that someone has set up a Kinect to control aeroplanes in Grand Theft Auto V by holding his arms out like a kid pretending to be a plane on the playground, or that he didn't make speed controlled by how loudly he shouted "Nyoom!" This is the latest work of Eric "Insert Controller Here" Heckman, a YouTuber known for his weird custom controllers (including one to ragequit by pouring literal salt). Now he's here T-posing, pretending to be a plane through Microsoft's motion sensor. And yes, absolutely he's planning to do this for Microsoft Flight Simulator too.
]]>With the "biggest update ever" for GTA Online still promised for later this year, Rockstar today released a smaller content update to tide crimers over. The 'Los Santos Summer Special' update, now live, adds news bits and pieces across existing modes and activities rather than something entirely new. That still includes new cars, new F1 race tracks, new PvP maps set inside the Diamond Casino, and more. Some handy quality-of-life changes too, like the Casino's Lucky Wheel saying when you can next spin again.
]]>Rockstar have opened up a little about future plans for GTA Online, saying that later this year they will launch its "biggest ever update" including "our latest take on Heists in an entirely new location." That's mega-vague but potentially quite exciting. You could read a lot into that, dreaming that they'll be adding Liberty City. Or you could guess it'll be, like, adding a new bank to Los Santos. I'll wait before getting too excited but I am glad to hear Rockstar have big plans ahead.
]]>Sony opening their big E3 pressblast last night with the news that Grand Theft Auto V is coming to PlayStation 5 was perhaps a damp squib for them but good news for us on PC. With the game now confirmed for next-gen consoles, Rockstar have committed to continuing content updates for them - and PC. They're also making a standalone version of GTA Online, though it's not yet confirmed for PC. As for the new crimes we might get up to in future updates, ah, Rockstar aren't saying yet.
]]>Rockstar have finally managed to get GTA Online back up, after a weekend where the game was basically unplayable due to overwhelming numbers of new players. The Epic Games Store is giving GTA V away free at the moment, see. So many people came to claim it that Epic's own servers collapsed during at the start the giveaway, so I guess it's only fair that Epic players crash Rockstar's servers in return. Having spent some time sat staring at error messages hitting retry myself, I admire the ingenuity of the person who built a wee robot to keep hitting the spacebar for them.
]]>Keep your eye on the Epic Games Store today: the next free game they're giving away is almost certainly Grand Theft Auto V. That's a real solid get for free. Epic have been playing it coy, teasing a mystery game instead of announcing the next one as they usually do, then they seemingly blew the surprise by tweeting the announcement early. Welp. The freebie should be with us in only a few hours.
]]>Inviting chaos into GTA Online, Rockstar today started giving away free green and purple alien bodysuits. Over the past few weeks, Los Santos has been invaded by violent aliens. First, gangs of players dressed as green aliens were jumping unsuspecting people with baseball bats and pool cues. Then, gangs of purple aliens started fighting the green aliens in sprawling street brawls. But the invasion was somewhat contained because suits are not cheap. Now anyone can be an alien at no cost - and pool cues are free too. Watch your back.
]]>Play GTA Online any time during May and Rockstar will wang you $500,000 of in-game cash within a few days. While that's not a huge amount of money on the scale of things, but it's a decent chunk for doing nothing. It won't buy you a new business or a top-end car but could help you save up. Or... you could use that free cash to buy an expensive alien bodysuit and join the delightfully daft alien beatdown gangs and green alien vs. purple alien wars that are raging across Los Santos this week.
]]>The hottest craze amongst GTA Online players is donning a green alien suit, picking up a baseball bat, and riding around with their alien friends in a van looking for people to beat up. In a game where death usually comes from some walloper on a hoverbike raining missiles, it's delightfully silly. But aliens could never hold the streets of Los Santos forever. While attempts to fight them as Men In Black (in black suit with the black Ray-Bans on) haven't really caught on, a surprising credible opposition has emerged: other aliens. Purple alien gangs have arrived, and they have come to rumble. I dropped into an alien street war myself today.
]]>Aliens are terrorising the streets of Los Santos, bursting out of vans to beat players to death with baseball bats, pool cues, and their little green fists then fleeing the scene. This isn't a new GTA Online expansion, it's the hot new craze amongst players. Over the past fortnight, as videos of alien van gangs have spread online, more and more players have bought the silly green alien suit and joined up with other pranksters for old-fashioned beatdowns. I've not yet encountered the visitors myself but am enjoying watching everyone's close encounters.
]]>I've found myself oddly envious of pigeons lately, watching them strut around without a care, and I feel fully vindicated after becoming a pigeon myself in GTA Online. For funsies, Rockstar have re-enabled the peyote plants which let players transform into random animals, from dogs and deer to pigs and pigeons. My favourite so far is becoming a cougar, burly enough to bowl pedestrians over without even attacking, though the stingray had a nice 'nature documentary' vibe rippling around beneath the waves.
]]>On the highways and flyways of GTA Online, no vehicle more clearly flags a player as a potential dickhead than the Oppressor Mk II. This jet-powered hoverbike can whizz round streets, fly high over the city, and rain homing missiles, making it a top pick for the sort of wrong'un who wants to grief everyone. Bad news, gang: the Oppressor Mk II has a 30% discount this week, meaning we'll be seeing more of them over Los Santos. Brace yourself.
]]>A legally-distinct series of races which are definitely not Formula One featuring no official F1 vehicles arrived in GTA Online, and it's as messy as you'd expect from an open-world murder simulator. Up to 16 murderers can compete in the new Open Wheel Races, whipping around at tight tracks at 120mph while fighting their honed instincts which scream to ram and kill everyone. At least, that's what I imagine other players are experiencing when I see six cars pile up at the first corner. While you can buy an F1 car for keepsies, the races will provide one so all are welcome. Ish. Welcome-ish. Unless you get in my way.
]]>It's said that the aerodynamic design of Formula One cars generates so much downforce that you could, theoretically, drive one upside-down. In reality, nobody seems willing to risk vehicle and vertebrae to attempt this stunt. But in GTA Online, we're mere bytes so of course driving on the ceiling (oh what a feeling!) was one of the first things people tried when the first F1 car arrived last week. It is possible, and it's great fun. I won one myself and frankly am now more interested in F1 stunting than the F1 races launching this week. Come see.
]]>A series of Formula 1-y races are coming to GTA Online on February 27th, Rockstar announced today. I say 'Formula 1' because that's the one I know, but I suppose the upcoming Open Wheel Race Series could be inspired by F2, or IndyCar, or... look, it's those weird cars shaped like fighter jets, okay. While those races don't start until next Thursday, crimepeople do have the opportunity to win one of its new cars now. The Progen PR4 is the grand prize on the Diamond Casino's free-to-spin prize wheel this week, see, and that's the only official way to get it before the launch.
]]>This week in GTA Online, the shiny Dewbauchee Vagner supercar has a tidy 35% discount. I've heard it's a good car and, being flush with cash from the recent giveaways, I thought I'd treat myself to one. Oh! Yes, that's a good car. That's a really good car. That's great. I've never driven a good car before. If I'd known GTA Online's expensive cars were actually great, not just flashy, I wouldn't have spent literal years of ill-gotten gains on novelty cars and wacky trash. I have amassed sensible family cars, crapmobiles, and racing hearses when I could have been travelling with style, speed, and luxury. And yet, I am still proud of my garage of garbage and wish to show you what I've been suffering through.
]]>Across the next fortnight, GTA Online players can claim $2,000,000 of crimecash for free just for logging in, while Red Dead Online players can scoop a free Bounty Hunter license as well as some free guns and ammo. Rockstar announced the freebies today while crowing about "another record-breaking holiday season" for both multiplayer modes, spaffing all sorts of claims against the digiwall. For example: December 2019 was GTA Online's "largest month ever in terms of player numbers," which is pretty impressive considering how old it is. But mostly I'm here for the free stuff.
]]>It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas in the Online modes of Grand Theft Auto V and Red Dead Redemption 2. Rockstar started the Christmas events yesterday, dressing the sandbox worlds in Christmas finery, placing presents under our trees, and firing up the snow machines. I have already won a GTA Online snowball fight to the death while dressed in my Christmas warms so my season is looking very merry indeed.
]]>The writing was on the wall when the Diamond Casino & Resort opened in GTA Online in July. A casino in a city of thieves was always going to be a target, and Rockstar have just crafted a new heist for players to rob the place. From today, you can take part in the Diamond Casino Heist, which Rockstar are claiming is their "biggest, most audacious, most complex criminal operation ever."
]]>I was homeless when I discovered Minecraft -- not homeless in the street-sleeping sense, thankfully. Only in the sofa-surfing sense. I had a bed, even. The creaking cabin bed of two friends who took pity on me and let me crash for a few months in their house, while I sullied my fingertips with sambuca in a dank Yorkshire nightclub for part-time pound coins. My chin-scratching uni days had just ended, but I stubbornly refused to go back to my family house in Northern Ireland. I could do this, I reasoned, I just needed time.
Then my friend showed me how to punch a tree, and I found a new home.
]]>Rockstar Games have paid £0 in UK corporation tax over the last ten years, despite making Actual Billions in profit, according to a report released by Taxwatch UK.
Rockstar's parent company Take-Two Interactive are using the Video Games Tax Relief provision to legally save an estimated £42,313,047 in corporation tax. Which is what it's for. Sort of.
]]>The Diamond Casino & Resort opened in GTA Online today, bringing new cooperative story missions and new ways to gamble away your ill-gotten gains. It's a social space along similar lines to the nightclubs, only dealing cards rather than pulling shapes. If you live in certain countries, mind, you'll be blocked from playing the casino games, presumably because of gambling laws. The casino also sells fancy penthouse apartments we can decorate more than other homes, slapping up pictures and slamming down sculptures.
]]>It has always amazed me that Grand Theft Auto Online (and its parent game, Grand Theft Auto 5) hasn't had a casino until now, what with it being all about a life of vice and high-stakes action. Next week on Tuesday the 23rd, Rockstar are fixing that, and opening the doors to the Diamond Casino & Resort. As with other GTA Online expansions, players will have to buy in with in-game money to access its new story missions and high-stakes tables. For everyone else, there'll be a bundle of new minigames to play, including poker, blackjack, roulette and betting on horse races. Below, the update trailer.
]]>I think I have everything necessary for an ace Independence Day beach bash.
☑ Sexy Uncle Sam outfit. ☑ As many beers as can fit into the pockets of a Sexy Uncle Sam outfit. ☑ Stars & stripes face paint. ☑ Stars & stripes monster truck. ☑ Flare gun. ☑ Homemade firework launcher.
So why am I being riddled with bullets, bumped by hoverbikes, and crushed by my own starry striped monster truck? Ah, it's just another Independence Day in Los Santos.
]]>Take-Two Interactive have won a legal fight with the maker of a GTA Online cheat suite, who's ordered to pay $150,000 (£116k) in damages for copyright infringement. The cheat, named Elusive, was capable of shenanigans including causing explosions at will, teleporting players around, flying, seeing through walls, screwing with players' cars, breaking NPC AI, and spawning vehicles and cash. Rockstar's parent company actually won by default because the defendant didn't challenge it, and so was assumed to admit the allegations. Such is the law. Elusive's makers stopped selling it in 2018 after "conversations" with Take-Two, though evidently the company didn't think that the end of the matter.
]]>Grand Theft Auto Online's latest update - Arena War - invites players to join the titular big new televised event broadcasting from the heart of Los Santos. It's a PvP vehicular throwdown with its own playmodes, progression and special arena vehicles with their own customisation system. While free to dabble in, the real rewards are limited to players who put some GTA-bucks down on an upgradeable workshop allowing them to bolt guns, armour and Mad Max-ian gubbins onto their cars for the next fight. It's out now, and I hear a trailer revving up below.
]]>Rockstar are still ominously silent about the prospect of a PC release for Red Dead Redemption 2, though rumours do swirl, but they are happy to continue taunting us by flicking fragments of it this way. GTA Online today launched a new Red Dead promo event, adding a quest unlocking a stone hatchet we can swing fiercely in GTAO then get in RDR2 too once that's out (on console). We're being made fools of. But at least the hatchet, like the golden cowboy revolver Rockstar added last year, comes with a simple murderchallenge rewarding a bonus $250,000k in GTAO virtuacash.
]]>Crimelords in GTA Online can now run their own nightclubs with old pal Gay Tony, following today's launch of the After Hours content update, and lowly criminals can go for a boogy too. As well as moneymaking venues, nightclubs are social spaces where anyone on the server (up to 30 players) can hang out, dance, and maybe get so drunk they black out and wake up several miles away (an actual thing that can happen). And yes, dancing is a minigame doodad with different styles and different moves, covering the span from getting groovy through going hard to awkward wedding uncle. I haven't invested in my own club yet but am enjoying others' as long-overdue nonviolent social spaces.
]]>Grand Theft Auto IV's fallen nightclub king Anthony "Gay Tony" Prince will return to help players run nightclubs in GTA Online, reveals a new trailer for the upcoming 'After Hours' free content update. That'll launch on July 24th, Rockstar announced today. Tony is coming to the west coast to help us lowly criminals start clubs, recruit talent, and get into explosive japes which honestly seem quite secondary to the business of playing songs for people to dance to. Today's trailer makes club missions look fairly story-focused, more like the ace Doomsday Heist than other businesses, and I hope that's true. Watch it below.
]]>Update Night is a fortnightly column in which Rich McCormick revisits games to find out whether they've been changed for better or worse.
I’ve only been in Los Santos a day and I’ve already been taken advantage of by a greedy CEO. Welcome to modern America, I guess.
]]>As the sun rose over Los Santos this morning, mist clung to the city and it did not feel like Independence Day. Despite the GTA Online city being as all-American as Disneyland, spirits were low, crime was high, and none of my neighbours were launching hot dogs or grilling fireworks. Perhaps that's just what happens when an Englishwoman living in Scotland plays a game made by a Scottish studio on servers populated chiefly by Eastern Europeans, but I knew I could do better. I've seen television; I know how Independence Day works. Handily, the Independence Day event has brought back the usual party supplies.
]]>Update: you betcha it's a hoax, Rockstar say.
"Rockstar Message: GTA VI Coming 2019" declares a GTA Online in-game notification that's started popping up intermittently. Rockstar's site doesn't mention Grand Theft Auto VI, no trailer announces it, and not even a rumour had hinted at it. You'd think Rockstar would make a bigger deal about announcing a new mega-blockbuster open-world murder simulator, wouldn't you? I would. Presumably this is just a hoax perpetrated by some nefarious hacker. For now: yes, those screenshots you're seeing of a GTA VI announcement are real (like that ↑ one I snapped myself today); but no, that announcement itself is almost certainly not real.
]]>Hip and happening disc jockeys including The Black Madonna will ride the wheels of steel in GTA Online when the next major update lets players run their own nightclubs. Crimefolk will get to buy, design, and run clubs, turning them into moneymakers (and maybe handy fronts laundering money from less honest ventures). The Black Madonna, Solomun, Tale Of Us, and Dixon will all appear in clubs playing sets, which is pretty nifty. But god, I'd love a cheesy DJ spinning Agadoo, The Locomotion, Y.M.C.A., Oops Up Side Your Head, Cotton Eye Joe, Time Warp... all the church disco classics.
]]>Though many new vehicles added to GTA Online are ridiculously expensive and bristling with turbochargers and missile launchers, treasures for crimefolks who grind or buy all that microtransaction cash, this week's update has added a car for the rest of us: a knock-off Lada which can even be customised with cardboard body kits. The Rune Cheburek is cheap, it's cheerful, and I've had a whole lot of fun driving my rusty new crapmobile around Los Santos.
]]>You look a little tired, friend. Let me just adjust this slider for you. There, wide awake. Now you’ve got some energy, how about listening to the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show? This week we’re talking about character creation. Which games spoil us with choice? And why do we always end up creating the same sneaky elf?
]]>Though Red Dead Redemption 2 hits consoles in a few months, it seems it won't spell the end of updates for Grand Theft Auto Online. Given the escalation of recent updates, culminating in the high drama of the Doomsday Heist, I'd half expected Rockstar might now wrap it up to focus on the cowboy 'em up's multiplayer. But in an investor conference call yesterday, Take-Two said Rockstar's free content updates have helped the game continue to exceed financial expectations and that Rockstar have "much more planned going forward."
More immediately, Rockstar this week added the small new Trap Door mode. Stay away from that Trap Door.
]]>As much as I'd like to see some manner of solo expansion for Grand Theft Auto V, its multiplayer component is a massive, sprawling thing with easily as much to do as the base game, it not more. It's just a pity that to get access to some of the more exciting events (such as gun-running), you need to grind for money for that initial investment. Thankfully that's a little easier this week, as Rockstar are giving away fat sacks of in-game cash this week, and discounting many mission-generating properties.
]]>Grand Theft Auto Online's spring season of race-centric updates continues with off-brand Mini Coopers trying to outfox the fuzz. As absurdly aggressive as GTA's police AI is notorious for being, nothing can quite compare with another human player out for blood, as you'll see in The Vespucci Job, a three-on-one competitive car chase mode shamelessly inspired by The Italian Job.
]]>In an ironic twist, GTA Online's latest competitive mode puts heavy firepower in the hands of players, but reserves it purely for shooting at safe, inanimate targets. In the new Target Assault mode, players pair up to crew a heavily armed vehicle racing down a circuit, with the driver trying to provide the turret gunner as clear a shot as possible at the big floating targets surrounding the track. Not to say that the mode is non-violent, of course...
]]>GTA Online is a strange beast of a game. Or several games, for that matter. It's as much an open world sandbox as it is a scripted story-driven co-op adventure, or a frantic team deathmatch, a pseudo Battle Royale or even a pure arcade racing game.
Building on the foundation of larger-than-life vehicles added by the Doomsday update, the Super Sports Series season promises a slew of new racetracks built around fresh hardware, as well as some less conventional gameplay modes being added to the game over the course of Spring, from now until May.
]]>I write this partially as a reminder to myself: every Grand Theft Auto V player who logs onto GTA Online by next Monday, the 26th, will receive $250,000 of in-game cash. It's not a staggering sum, but it's enough to ease a new player in nicely or help established criminals save for something big and shiny. Rockstar are offering a rebate on items bought in-game too. I started playing GTA Online again myself recently and, after not enjoying it at all at launch and still finding some bits annoying, I am having a gay old time doing crimes with my pals or simply sightseeing with a bicycle and a podcast. I will welcome this extra virtuacash. Alice: go log in after finishing this post.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
My friends and I have three matching tattoos. One for each heist we pulled. The shooting, driving, rocket-launching and knife-criming sandbox of Grand Theft Auto Online is a jolly lark. But even the four player co-op heists have created fewer memories for me than the silliness of my friends when there’s no murdering to be done.
]]>One of the more interesting facets of Grand Theft Auto Online's evolution has been a gradual loss of restraint. While the non-story updates have been pretty wacky all round (the most recent patch added the genre-blending Transform races to the in-game track editor), the past few major world-building modules have brought all manner of military-spec hardware to the table in character-led missions, along with a few sci-fi weapons systems for flavour.
It feels like all of that is coming to a head soon with the release of the upcoming Doomsday Heist update for GTA V's multiplayer module. Read on to see just how your crew might just be saving the world in the bombastic announcement trailer.
]]>The endless quest for more American dollars continues without respite or clemency at Take Two Interactive, daddy of Rockstar and uber-publisher of Grand Theft Auto V. They want to put “recurrent consumer spending” in all their future games, said CEO Strauss Zelnick in a recent conference call for investors. “Recurrent consumer spending” is how men in suits say “microtransactions”, which is how men in slightly shabbier suits say: “we’re putting a shop in your videogame”.
]]>Grand Theft Auto Online [official site] has been growing steadily for a good long while now, adding new missions and competitive mini-games since launch. Only fitting, then, that the multiplayer crime-o-thon is sustained by shameless and continued thievery, with the most recent update - Smugglers Run - adding a Battlegrounds-esque Battle Royale playmode with an up-armored vehicular spin. Previous expansions have introduced Trackmania-esque improbable stunt racing on player-made tracks and Splatoon-y colourful competitions of turf control among other such delights.
Go on. Take a look at the trailer after the jump and tell me what game they've nicked the wing-mirrors off of this time.
]]>Aww, poor little GTA Online [official site]. It feels left out of the battle royale party being thrown by Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds and its seventy billion players. But it’s going to throw its own party, you’ll see, and you know what? It’ll invite armoured jeeps. Motor Wars is a new mode Rockstar have added in the recent Smuggler’s Run update and it involves parachuting into a “periodically shrinking kill box”.
]]>Grand Theft Auto V [official site] developers Rockstar Games appear to have talked parent company Take-Two Interactive out of shutting down OpenIV, a modding tool for GTA IV and V. This is good news. The makers of OpenIV received a cease-and-desist letter from Take-Two earlier this month, prompting outrage from players, but Rockstar have confirmed that Take-Two will now focus their ire only on mods that affect GTA Online in an attempt to crack down on hackers.
Open IV has just been updated with a new version, too, so it definitely lives.
]]>Take-Two's lawyers have shut down three cheats for GTA Online, Kotaku report, and their makers are donating their ill-gotten gains to charity. Cheats offered by the trio of Force Hax, Lexicon, and Menyoo in the multiplayer side of Grand Theft Auto V [official site] variously include free cash, invulnerability, spawning vehicles and objects, superpowers like flight and superspeed, spamming big bags of cash, and forcing other players to do things. A real sack of dickbaggery.
These cheat shutdowns come shortly after The Suits killed popular GTA modding tool OpenIV, supposedly for enabling cheating in multiplayer. Rockstar haven't said how this singleplayer tool enabled online cheating, so the explanation is still confusing, but it's good that The Suits are cracking down on actual recognised cheats too.
]]>Grand Theft Auto modding tool OpenIV was shut down with a legal threat because it enabled hacking in GTA Online [official site], according to Rockstar. The makers of OpenIV announced this week that they had received a cease and desist letter from the layers of Take-Two, Rockstar's parent company, and neither could nor would defend themselves against The Suits. And so, they have stopped making one of the major modding tools for GTAs IV and V and pulled the downloads. We didn't have a clear idea of exactly why Take-Two were going after mod tools, but now we have a reason. A foolish reason, but a reason all the same.
]]>Okay, okay, enough with the E3 news on video games coming out in 2027. What about now? Well! The multiplayer crimeworld of Grand Theft Auto Online [official site] today launched its 'Gunrunning' free content update, adding loads of new crimes to do as an arms dealer. Players get to start a company in an underground bunker, complete naughty missions, grow their business with research and manufacturing, customise vehicles with big weapons, and more. Also, it adds flying motorbikes out of Megaforce.
]]>Let's pretend for a moment that the best part of GTA Online [official site] isn't seeing who can go furthest when leaping off the Hollywood sign and deploying a parachute to scoot to victory before having a little bike race to the foot of a hill. Have I lost you already? Fine. I'll wait for you to finish the bike race.
Back? Okay. So there's apparently an update called "Gunrunning" coming. I'm tentatively interested but only because of the running part and not the gun part. Running with guns sounds unsafe. Even more unsafe than running with scissors.
]]>The heists and co-op consumerism of GTA Online was (and is) probably the best thing about Rockstar’s latest blockbuster. With the very notable exception of APB, few have tried to outright ape the crimes 'n' capers online sandbox formula. But Broke Protocol [official site] is aiming for just that. It's a blocky criminal roleplaying game set in a persistent online world where you can grow weed, hijack cars and get shot by the police while robbing a bank. Come see it in action below.
]]>Grand Theft Auto Online [official site] will return to the series' top-down roots -- with an added touch of Micro Machines -- next week with its Tiny Racers update. That'll bring new top-down stunt races with power-ups and all. Youngfolk are often surprised to learn that Grand Theft Auto began life as a top-down 2D game, and look incredulous when I tell them that humanity hadn't even discovered the third dimension of our own world until 1987. Maybe now they'll believe me. Here, watch this trailer:
]]>Rather than marvel at digital houses we couldn't even dream of owning an armoire to put in IRL, let alone the whole building, we've turned our attention to the world of videogame apartments. These chunks of partitioned living are often just modular, nondescript spaces designed to house clues or bolster the sense of people living in a city, but occasionally there are apartments which offer up a real sense of their owner's character or palatial penthouses which ooze nouveau riche luxury.
]]>It is a shame that Rockstar's focus since launching Grand Theft Auto V has been GTA Online [official site] rather than any sort of singleplayer expansion, especially given that the sandbox multiplayer mode has been rife with cheating. Well, at least Rockstar have started cracking down in a new way. They're starting removing "illegitimately gained" imaginary money from players' accounts, draining the bank accounts of naughty people. They'll also be wiping the progress of folks who get suspended.
]]>Start honking your hog and pumping your guts: bikers have arrived in Grand Theft Auto Online [official site]. Multiplayer crimepeople can now form and join motorcycle clubs - and not the polite kind who get together over tea and biscuits to write their self-printed newsletter. No, these are rude, noisy motorcycle clubs, doing all those crimes you see on television. Along with new bike-y activities, the Bikers update brings new bikes to ride and new clothes and cosmetic options to make yourself look rowdy.
]]>Motorcycles, aka the horses of the highway, will be seeing a lot more action in GTA Online [official site] following Rockstar’s upcoming update. We already told you about what’s expected in this addition – the ability to start an 8-person motor club, new competitive and co-op modes, new bikes, weapons, clothes and tattoos – but you didn’t listen. You just twisted the throttle like a petulant John Connor and pretended not to hear us. Well, I’m here to tell you that the update is happening on Octo - oh for heavens sake.
I SAID THE UPDATE IS HAPPENING ON OCTOBER 4.
]]>"It's not really a place, it's a feeling," biker icon James Hurley once said of his dream destination. "Sometimes riding at night, I punch off the headlights and roll the throttle in just rocket blind into the dark."
But some bikers are dirty boys. They cuss, smoke cigarettes, refuse to tuck their shirts, and don't even kiss their mothers goodbye. These rough tough scruffs congeal into gangs, roaring down the highway honking their hogs and yelling e.g. "Hey you, go on, get out of it!" Don't you find that secretly thrilling? If so, watch for the next major Grand Theft Auto Online [official site] update, which will focus on bikers and bike gangs.
]]>I've been hoping Rockstar will add more singleplayer stuff to Grand Theft Auto V [official site] rather than focusing on its multiplayer, but I can hardly be upset by them turning Los Santos into some sort of Hot Wheels-y, TrackMania-ish raceground. Grand Theft Auto Online's Cunning Stunts update (ooh those scamps!) will bring aerial raceways with loops, pipes, and rings of fire, not to mention new vehicles to race round them. It'll launch next week. For now, look at this wackiness:
]]>I remember when Rockstar released the second trailer for Grand Theft Auto V [official site] towards the end of 2012. I got a text from my mum after it'd been on the telly saying something along the lines of: "Wow, I don't agree with what that computer game is about, but the advert looks like something from a movie." She was right, it did, and to this day few games have matched the standard.
It seems the sandbox crime sim hasn't lost its knack for stylish cinematics either, having just launched the trailer for GTA Online's latest expansion Further Adventures in Finance and Felony. It's out on June 7, and here's what it's all about:
]]>Of course it's called Cunning Stunts. Grand Theft Auto 5 wouldn't be a Grand Theft Auto game without the po-faced plot and crass punnery, but I'm pleased that GTA Online is bit-by-bit acknowledging the other side of itself: mainly, that its silliness and not crimes that its players most want to perpetrate within its spaces. So it is that a future GTA Online update will bring with it a new set of stunt-track making props, which will let you create things like that pictured above, among much else.
]]>Not everyone can be The Big Cheese, and every gangster movie in the world shows the terrible fate befalling anyone who tries. So give up. Accept that you're just another brick in the wall, another cog in the machine, another putz put on this beautiful green Earth to make a richer person's life easier. Relax. It's fine. Hey, I'm right there with you buddy. Let's accept our fate. Let's stop trying. Let's embrace that futility. Let's fill our entire lives with it. Let's - you and me - get virtual jobs as bodyguards for richer players in Grand Theft Auto Online [official site].
]]>Oh boy, am I conflicted. Fallout 4’s main plotline requires that I do this thing and as far as things go, it’s a pretty major thing and a major thing that you’d expect someone with the maternal instinct of my character Halle to crack on with straight away. The trouble is, rather than doing this major thing, for at least an hour now, she, and when I say ‘she’, I mean ‘I’, have been poking around Sanctuary, scrapping anything that glows yellow so I can salvage enough materials to build a house big enough for me and my Minutemen companions. I had largely avoided Bethesda’s drip-feed of Fallout 4 pre-publicity but when I somehow found out that the game had settlement building, I think I might have involuntarily passed a little wind in joyous anticipation.
That's because I’ve felt a similar rosy inner glow while hanging around other hubs and houses in many other games I’ve played. I think it’s easy to underestimate the value of having a ‘home’ base option, especially in open world games where there is a free-roaming element, but it's a part of why I love certain games.
]]>29! 42! 38! 87! 69! Hut! Hut! Hike! And that's how the Pilgrims came in 1492 to the land we now know as the United States of A. One genocidal colonisation later, Thanksgiving in November is now a happy time for families to come together to eat pumpkins carved into the shape of turkeys, bicker, argue, threaten to call the police for real this year, and shout "29! 42! 38! 87! 69! Hut! Hut! Hike!" while shoving each other, just as the Pilgrims did all those years ago. This I have learned from watching American sitcoms.
This year, you can even hop into Grand Theft Auto Online [official site] to do pushing in a new American Foosbalt-inspired mode. Numbers not included.
]]>GTA Online [official site] wants you to commit crimes - to kill your fellow players, beat them in illegal street races, and team up with them in heists in order to make money. But is it possible to make money without committing crimes?
Spoilers: no. But I tried, and it was the most fun I've had in the game's online modes thus far.
]]>Lowriders are something to do with Marmite, as I understand it, so I'm delighted that Rockstar have dedicated an entire Grand Theft Auto Online [official site] update to this sterling British toast topping. Launched today, the Lowriders update adds loads of new ways to customise cars, which I assume include making them look like Marmite jars. You'll also find a fourth purchasable property, new clothes, hairstyles, and accessories, extra missions, and other jazz.
]]>Before Grand Theft Auto V [official site] came out, I imagined I'd vanish into GTA Online for a few months for freeform sandbox shenanigans with a load of other folks. Turned out, the online side's open world itself was pretty dead (aside from folks with superguns kindly supermurdering me until I turned on Passive Mode) and the action involved lots of boring lobbies and waiting and loading. It was not the dynamic world I'd hoped for. Well, I'll be dropping back in tonight, now that Rockstar have livened things up.
An update today brings Freemode Events, activities that just happen in the world, from arena brawls to... becoming a werewolf? Interesting! Have a look:
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