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We're still in the dark with regards to a GTA 6 PC release date, but the neon-filtered pre-order screen for Rockstar's next blockbuster on my PS5 looks too good to be true. I've racked up thousands of hours in GTA Online on PC over the last decade, but in the space between its arrival on desktop in 2015 and its launch on the PlayStation 3 two years prior (a statement that now reads like a typo), I must have clocked hours into the hundreds.
As detailed by PC Gamer's own Rory Norris last month, developer Rockstar insists at this late stage on describing GTA 6 as a "single-player experience"—but there's simply no way an evolution of the game's multiplayer offshoot isn't in the immediate offing, right?
Whatever form that takes, I fully expect to once more use its console iteration as a test bed for my inevitable platform switch when the time comes. But the overarching question at this point is: what guise will GTA Online 2.0 take upon arrival? And, perhaps more to the point, what do we even want that to look like?
Clear as mud
Without sounding too much like an old bastard, I suspect age will play an integral role here. I was 27 when GTA Online landed in late 2013, and I first migrated to Los Santos from the boundless plains of Minecraft. Now 40 years old, my desire to build and refine my own worlds has waned quite significantly, therefore I view Project Rome—the codename widely associated with Rockstar's reported push towards user-generated content and tools for the next era of GTA Online—through a lens of relative indifference.
I still think UGC is very cool—watching my kids grow and raze their own creations in Minecraft, Fortnite and Roblox is a joy; as is engaging with other people's projects in games like Dreams. But, and I can only speak for myself here, I no longer believe I'm the primary target demographic for out-of-the-box creator-led experiences.
Which is, of course, totally fine. I'll still enjoy this parallel of GTA Online Part Two in the same way I thrive in Grand Theft Auto 5's roleplaying scene, despite having not once built an asset or script of my own in these spaces. Rockstar's acquisition of Cfx.re , coupled with the omnipresent Project Rome chatter in forums, suggests the studio is thinking beyond the traditional single/multiplayer split towards something much broader in Vice City, and the enduring success and appeal of FiveM has shown that millions of players are happy to spend countless hours in Los Santos without ever touching Rockstar's intended gameplay loop.
GTA 6 will never be, say, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, but GTA Online 2.0 will almost certainly need to evolve in order to meet the expectations of modern players—not just in terms of what other games are doing right now, but also by virtue of GTA Online's growth beyond recognition over the last 13 years.
To the latter end, GTA Online remains the same high-stakes murder playground it has always been, but over time it has also inadvertently become, quite simply, a cool place to hang out. From its machinima scene to its stunting community, its Dr Dre update to its After Hours nightclub circuit, its nefarious business activities to its still booming roleplay spectrum and its many, many more subcultural identities, GTA Online has become as much of a platform as it has a tangent of a popular single-player video game.
I suspect that distinction is an important one as we enter the next chapter, but in any event, given that Rockstar has barely shown us what GTA 6 looks like in motion—far less anything on the nuts and bolts of Online 2.0—I cannot help but wonder. Can Rockstar support creativity without breaking the essence of what has allowed Grand Theft Auto to endure for the last 30 years?
More questions than answers
(Image credit: Rockstar) With a more user-generated focus comes a series of questions. Who in GTA Online 2.0 moderates that content? Who profits? Who owns maps? Can creators monetise? Do servers stay independent? How much freedom is too much? What about GTA Online as it applies to GTA 5? Will there be a tangible link between the two worlds? Or will Rockstar put the original GTA:O out to pasture, similar to Blizzard's handling of Overwatch 2 and its forerunner? Answers on the back of a faux Miami postcard, I guess.
What may be more important here isn't how Rockstar views GTA Online 2.0, but how it views itself on the cusp of a new and almost certainly redefining era. If GTA Online as it exists today has become a platform, then it's very possible Rockstar sees itself through a similar lens. Epic has Unreal Engine, for example; it has Fortnite and it has the Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN).
Roblox, on the other hand, has Roblox Studio. Valve has Workshop. Build a Rocket Boy, despite Mindseye's well-documented troubles, still has big plans for Everywhere as a UGC-driven prospect. And Rockstar between times has purchased FiveM.
Should GTA Online 2.0 in turn become more like Fornite, then? Should it introduce a formalised creator economy and revenue sharing, a Discover tab that helps surface community creations, branded collaborations, and live events? I don't know, is the short answer. I've long felt a large-scale Grand Theft Auto-flavoured Coachella-style endeavour would be fantastic—akin to Fortnite's Travis Scott event of 2020—especially given the fact Rockstar has a host of world-class DJs at its disposal by way of its Circo Loco Record imprint.
Heists on a far grander scale would be much-welcomed too, continuing the steady evolution of the series-signature set-piece from GTA 4 through 5 and now 6, incorporating more players by way of bigger servers. And then some degree of seamless roleplay integration is something I'm certain would absolutely fly on PC, standing on the am-dram shoulders of everything that's come before in Los Santos and Blaine County.
These are but a few things I personally would love to see, but with so much of the basics still unknown, it is, unfortunately, impossible to think too hard on big picture stuff. The next iteration of GTA Online enters a very different world from its predecessor, and with so many well-established live-service platforms already in operation, Rockstar finds itself in relatively unfamiliar territory and under a degree of unfamiliar pressure.
Without blowing smoke up the developer's backside, though, if anyone can pull off such a feat, it's surely them. The fact that Rockstar has shown us absolutely nothing to this end concerns me ever-so-slightly—but I guess the arrival of the series' first single-player venture in close to a decade-and-a-half will serve as a pretty good distraction from what may or may not lie ahead. And that grace period between GTA 6's imminent console launch and its long-awaited arrival on PC gives Rockstar plenty of time to sort itself out with an eye on our platform of choice.
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