It’s not time for GTA 6 yet even though its cover has been blown.
From major GTA Online content drops to the official confirmation of Red Dead Online’s developmental death, the past year has been full of highs and lows for the Rockstar Games community. We’ll be taking a look back at what 2022 gave us ahead of that is expected to be another big year for fans of the storied game studio. 2021 ended with the release of the best GTA Online updates featuring Franklin and Dr. Dre but GTAO fatigue has been kicking in for many.
Starting the New Year with a sour taste
At the end of 2021, the Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition released to industry wide condemnation for a variety of reasons. This port of the mobile version contained game breaking bugs, criticized stylistic changes and just utterly wrong art fed through AI. Disappointment of this flawed remaster by Grove Street Games seeped from last year into this one. Right at the start of the tear, Take-Two CEO, Strauss Zelnick, claimed “We did have a glitch in the beginning, that glitch was resolved.” As we know it was far more than just “a glitch”. To be fair to Mr Zelnick, despite being heavily criticised on social media for the state of this remaster and Red Dead Online, he did respond to fans privately.
With the physical Switch version out in February, fans held hope significant fixes and changes were coming to the GTA Trilogy Definitive Edition at some point. However, those patches were few and far between. Sure, they did make some changes that were welcomed by the community but they were few and far between.
The three games are still not up to Rockstar Games’ standard over a year after release, it is still not available on Steam and the mobile version was delayed from 2022 to 2023. Whilst many people have moved on and won’t forgive Take-Two for this, there might be some light at the end of the tunnel in 2023. Rockstar Games have taken over the project in recent months and a Steam plus Epic Games Store release is on the horizon. For 2022 though, it was a disappointing year for this remaster, as many expected.
More Grand Theft disappointment
The power of the latest generation of consoles unlocks so much more potential so Rockstar Games decided to take this opportunity to create a more improved version of GTA V and GTA Online. The problem is, many game developers have released their “next gen” versions of games as a free update. Rockstar and Take-Two decided to charge $10-30 for a new unit of GTA V. Nearly 9 years since release, this game had crossed through three generations of consoles.
Fans have been restless for a while wanting a new game but all they are getting this year is a re-release. And when we finally learned more details it was not as “expanded nor enhanced” as expected. The 60fps performance with better graphics is of course a much better experience than what the Xbox One and PS4 can offer but it still feels underwhelming. Rockstar have continued to add to it with Ray-Traced reflections near the end of the year but this is not the next generation GTA fans want. Not being able to play with friends left behind on the previous generation is also rough. To add salt on the wound, the physical disc edition does not come with a game map, a staple of Rockstar Games’ titles.
Overall this Xbox Series X|S and PS5 version is a mixed bag because it does make the experience of playing GTA Online far, far better than before (if you don’t play on PC), but we’ve seen incredible things achieved in other games for free on the consumer’s end. Oh, and it was delayed for a while too. On top of this the PC version is looking likely to receive the next gen exclusive content but word from Rockstar has been very quiet. With the year anniversary of this re-release already creeping up on us we hope PC can get this new GTA V version as soon as as possible.
GTA+ enhances anger
As part of this new version of GTA V, Rockstar launched its own subscription service, GTA+. The reception from the GTA Online community was frankly chilling. This is not what most players of the game wanted. Another way to pay real money to earn things quicker as well as exclusive items. Rockstar obviously had their reasons behind launching this. The game brings in millions of new players every few months so they are far, far behind those of us veterans of the game. It’s a way for new players to play catch up but at a cost and they get exclusive items.
For all the vocal backlash from the GTA Online community, it has actually been some sort of success. Take-Two Interactive have repeatedly said how it is beating their internal expectations which has caused scepticism from the GTAO community. On our side, the GTA+ articles we do covering all of the content in that month’s subscription are actually some of our best performing articles each month. It’s proof people are indeed interested every month what is on offer. Whether they are paying customers though is something we won’t know. We personally do not subscribe to GTA+.
GTA 6 confirmed, finally
The most anticipated game in history’s existence was finally acknowledged by Rockstar Games themselves at the start of the year. This was what fans had been waiting for! Except it wasn’t. In a Newswire post sharing the release date of the delayed next gen version of GTA V and thanking fans, Rockstar confirmed “we are pleased to confirm that active development for the next entry in the Grand Theft Auto series is well underway.”
This statement was different to what fans had been expectating. A vague logo drop on a random Tuesday afternoon? Nothing like that. Just a few words saying they’re working on an actual new entry in the series. The Red Dead Redemption 2 announcement felt like it broke the internet. Where was the VI logo? fans asked. The gaming industry was and still is facing challenges when it comes to hiring. Several large franchises got a sequel announced in a wall of text to get people to apply for hiring and Rockstar were likely doing this as well.
RIP to RDO
The Red Dead Online community had been united for a quite some time as content updates were sparse and Rockstar had remained tight-lipped on the future of this live service. Speculation grew in 2021 as Kotaku published a report stating RDO was put on hold due to the next gen version of GTA V and the remastered trilogy. As a year with no new major content approached, the community launched #SaveRedDeadOnline across social media and got it trending. We released an extensive article delving into the situation. To make matters worse, Kotaku and reputable leaker Tez, stated a remaster of Red Dead Redemption and GTA IV had been canned.
Then came what felt was the inevitable. Rockstar finally spoke out with bad news as the #SaveRedDeadOnline was steaming away. Due to ramping up development on GTA 6, major updates would not be coming to Red Dead Online. Even a next gen update would go a long way but talk of that seems to have faded. Just think, it might be one of the best looking games on last gen consoles thanks to Rockstar’s artistry but it could be even better… The war was over and the players had lost. Until next time, partner.
One of the worst parts about all of this is that Red Dead Redemption 2 is still selling roughly 1 million copies every month; hitting 46 million total sold just a few months ago. It does not end there, the game is consistently one of the most downloaded and purchased games every single month. That does not even really take into account the fact it had its highest ever peak player count on Steam in November. Even all of that is not enough to have a team creating online content for it. For one of the most beloved games of the generation, that continues to find new fans, it is a bitter end.
GTA Online gets major improvements requested by fans
In a stark contrast to Red Dead Online, the GTA Online side of things got even better in 2022. After years of requests from fans Rockstar finally nerfed the Oppressor Mk II, made sell missions playable in Invite Only sessions and so much more. Shark Cards even got an GTA$ increase. The health of GTA Online and its economy has never been better. The problem is these things took years to happen even though they were highly requested… a win is a win though. These changes have made GTA Online far more enjoyable in the latter half of this year, in its 9th year.
Plenty of these changes came with The Criminal Enterprises content update. A lot of cars people have been wanting to see came to the game along with new in-game story missions. The year ended us getting yet another content update, the Los Santos Drug Wars. A lot of the content is in drip-feed through to 2023 and it has not been as well-received by the community content wise. Great changes came to the game but it feels like we’re all ready for a new game. The best part of 2022 from Rockstar Games though has been the improvements to GTA Online.
Rockstar hosted various in-game events this year too which were nice and engaging. The Sprunk vs. eCola competition had the community divided in a several week long battle. The community is stronger united though and Rockstar’s latest Heist Challenge raised the bar once again but was still smashed. Halloween also brought UFOs down to Los Santos and Blaine County. It was similar to last year’s event but it did have some additional pieces to it. Overall, it was not a bad year for GTA Online with these events but there is still room for improvement.
The history defining GTA 6 leak
We all could not believe our eyes on the day of September 18th. Gameplay of Grand Theft Auto 6 had leaked. Real, genuine gameplay in 90 different videos. No fake stuff. All legitimate stolen from Rockstar’s internal systems. Rockstar Games have been known to be a Fort Knox when it comes to leaks and yet a teenager infiltrated them to leak their most prized possessions, GTA 6 and source code. What we saw was early in development footage of the talented developers at work on the next Grand Theft Auto instalment. For many fans, this felt like Christmas came early. For the hard working developers, it was crushing to have their incomplete work painted across the internet. It is still hard to believe this happened really.
The sheer magnitude and volume of this leak left Rockstar Games with no other option but to respond to it. They said they were “extremely disappointed” that their work from “early in development footage of the next Grand Theft Auto” game had been shared illegally. The teen in question was arrested but since then, due to his age, there have been no more developments.
This ordeal had fans wondering if Rockstar will be forced into changing their marketing strategy and releasing a logo or trailer soon after. Rockstar do what Rockstar wants and 2022 ends without anything more on the next game. We’ve had reports about the game’s development that the leak verified and it feels like the game is still as far out, late 2024, 2025 or even beyond…
Max Payne returns remastered
In a surprise announcement, Remedy and Rockstar revealed they have entered a new development agreement to remaster Max Payne 1 & 2 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X S and PC. Remedy will be making this title and not Rockstar. Instead Rockstar will be publishing the remastered collection. This was a nice piece of good news after the negative GTA+ and next gen hits. Even though this is all we have heard on this project in all of 2022 as it is at the “concept development stage”, it is still welcomed.
Missing: GTA San Andreas VR
The VR release of GTA San Andreas which was announced by Mark Zuckerberg in 2021 has been completely absent in 2022. The status of this project is unknown. It has not been mentioned by Rockstar Games, Take-Two, nor Meta since its announcement well over a year ago. As a VR enthusiast, it has been extremely disappointing to have gone through 2022 with no updates on this project. Just another miss for Rockstar Games fans this year.
A busy, mixed bag
Looking back on the year shows we’ve had quite a lot happen from Rockstar Games this year but it still is less than what is expected. At least another full year of GTA V and GTA Online is on the cards. It is hardly surprising given GTA V and GTA Online are still so successful over nine years into their life. It even outsold 2022’s game of the year, Elden Ring, at one point this year. The game has now sold over 165m copies but sales have slowed down in 2022 compared to previous years. This absolute blockbuster is finally showing it’s time has peaked. We’d love to hear your thoughts so let us know down in the comments.
For all Rockstar Games news updates in 2023, stay tuned to RockstarINTEL.
3 Comments
Gta v
Jou poes man. Red dead online is lekkerder as gta online. You imbaciles
I like the main story of GTA 5. I am not alone in this, but I am tired of the meaningless DLC content for it. Every time I turn around, there’s a new DLC content. Why cant they have the new cars and weapons in single player? I hate playing online. They either come out with GTA 6, or come out with something else. Stop making more boring content for GTA 5.