First releasing in 2013, Grand Theft Auto Online has become hugely popular within the GTA fandom, but its lack of cross-play has long frustrated players wishing to team up with their friends on other platforms. GTA Online has seen its fair share of changes since its initial launch, continually evolving over the course of nearly a decade. The game still receives regular updates in 2023, with the most recent, San Andreas Mercenaries, arriving in June. Although Rockstar Games has never officially given a reason, there’s most likely a good explanation for why cross-play features don’t exist in GTA Online.
Currently, GTA Online is available on PC and three generations of Xbox and PlayStation consoles, most recently releasing on the Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5. However, cross-play isn’t supported between any platforms at this time, and it probably won’t happen anytime soon – if ever. It’s unclear why Rockstar Games didn’t initially support cross-play for GTA Online. In 2013, when the game first released, cross-play features were far less common, but not completely unheard of. Since then, however, Rockstar Games has developed a reputation for not supporting cross-play.
In the time since its release, there have been countless mods implemented into GTA Online for PC. These mods range from the simple to the elaborate, but they mostly serve to make the experience more enjoyable. However, because of this, it would be hard to support cross-play between PC and other platforms. There would have to be modded and vanilla servers, and it’s unclear if alterations made to the PC version would even be available to console players. Seven years in with GTA Online, and cross-play is probably just too big of a headache for Rockstar Games to try now.
GTA Online has been successful for Rockstar Games, so the lack of cross-play doesn’t appear to have hurt its popularity. From a business standpoint, it doesn’t make sense for Rockstar to invest time and money balancing the game for cross-play across all of GTA Online’s platforms when the game is already incredibly successful without such a feature. Even though a lot of fans would like to see cross-play supported, it’s probably just not worth the time and effort for Rockstar, at least for now.
More recently, Red Dead Online didn’t support cross-play despite swirling rumors and requests from fans. Rockstar Games announced the end of updates for Red Dead Online in 2022, signaling the end of any crossplay potential for the title. The continuing regular updates for GTA Online mean that it’s not impossible that a cross-play feature could be incorporated someday, although it seems unlikely for now. A potential successor to GTA Online that could come attached to GTA 6 might be fans’ best hope for cross-play in Grand Theft Auto Online, but it’s likely best not to wait with bated breath.
2023-08-03 20:24:03
Link from screenrant.com
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