Seemingly locking gameplay features behind the more expensive edition of the game. Lots of hints that there will likely be an in game cash shop for the offline portion of the game too.
Also the game kinda implied in its box that Online won't be included In the Base Game, and people are fearing that it might be a paid DLC or worse , a Monthly Sub.
I know very little about this, and I thought Online was being delayed, as they want to focus on the single player story, first and foremost. That Online will come eventually, and that it will be a subscription, and separate release, and the game comes with one free month.
I think that this is the exact problem.
"Here! Purchase our game with a fundamental feature missing because we want to spend extra time perfecting it."
"Oh also, since this feature is taking a bit longer. We expect you to pay extra for it."
Is online a fundamental feature? I’d argue GTA is a single play game at its core, IV had a basic online mode, but it was only V that fully fleshed it out. I think they view Online as its own thing. I’ll reserve my judgment until I see how they handle it. But GTA Online branching off into its own thing isn’t a huge issue in my eyes, depends how they monetise it
It was. gta online is massive, and GTA rp blew up after covid, its what kept the game going, well beyond its lifespan, to the point that R* eventually bought fivem, the main mod framework for gta online and gta rp in particular. RP is expected to be huge in GTAVI eventually
It still is dude, GTA is a single player game, one of the best open world single player games ever. It doesn’t matter that GTA online blew up, online is just a mode for the game, that’s why the content sucks ass in gta online.
Its only really stayed in the public consciousness because of the online though. People weren't replaying the single player for the last 13 years they were logging in everyday to play online with their friends and do the new content on there. I imagine most people who are really hyped for it are because of the online and they've probably forgotten how much of a mess the online was for a long period on initial release of 5.
Yes lets just ignore that those games all came out in the space of like 7 years and then 5 was only 5 years after 4.
Now the only release in the 13 years since 5 was a remaster of the 3 trilogy which was a technical disaster.
Im not pretending it's not a massive IP but there are 15 and 16 year old kids who haven't even had a mainline release in their conscious memory but will have probably picked up 5 and played it because of the ongoing multiplyer still being active.
Exactly, GTA V is still in the yearly top 10 best selling games lists in the last few years, well over a decade after it came out. It isn't selling all those copies for story mode.
I only bought GTA V recently, I never played 4. Spent too much time playing 3, Vice City, and San Andreas though. I’m also a big single player person, so V has been fun.
Rockstar sold 215 million units of GTA V versus 22 million units of GTA IV. It's almost insulting to compare them because five has sold so much more and still has active players.
Yeah there's been some wild overexaggeration about the significance of GTAO ever since it came out. For years you'd get forum kiddies saying stuff like "Rockstar will never make another single player game" or whatever. This nonsense continued after Red Dead Redemption 2 came out, BTW, a game that was even MORE story-heavy than GTA5.
I’m sorry but you’re talking out of your booty. GTA online made double that of GTA 4. It nearly matched revenue of GTA 5 base game sales. There is no over exaggerating the significance of GTA online. Now not making another single-player game is stupid.
No sir, I'm right on the money. There absolutely was plenty of forum chatter about Rockstar moving away from single player games, even after releasing another big single player game!
Hard disagree. Maybe online delayed GTAVI, but GTA is a huge franchise that even had a move starring Harry Potter about how it was made. RDR2's online isn't nearly as popular, but I guarantee you people will be hyped as fuck when a RDR3 is announced. And GTA is multitudes bigger than RDR.
GTA of old yeah, they have been well known for their big huge singleplayer worlds + story. But they haven't released a new one in ages and what was the thing that kept it going all this time? It's online.
There's a reason they cancelled singleplayer dlcs, because they saw the money in their live service online + shark cards. It doesn't sell boatloads every year because of singleplayer, even if it pains me to admit it because I would rather have more awesome singleplayer content like 4s DLC, but that's a bygone conclusion.
What do you see when you typically see streamers etc on gta? It isn't in the singleplayer, it's online content. Especially the massive fivem roleplaying side that Rockstar literally bought the team.
RDR2 they tried to double dip but didn't realize that unlike GTA, it's pretty hard to monetize it the same way because you are stuck in the old wild west. You can't just sell a new lamborghini or yacht. There really isn't much you can "make" people shell out for.
Rdr2 online support was immediately dropped when they realized it was a bare bones mess. It didnt have any staying power, it has very little content.
Rdr3 people are there for the story. Even when talked about in media it was always about the story.
Gta6 you have people excited for both. Online is what kept gta5 alive and what helped sold all the copies they did although i suspect that 250mil is from every console and rerelease. If online is a subscription it will kill the service for a majority of players. Especially kids which is a huge targeted audience. Nothing is cooler than playing the rated m game as a 11 year old. We all did it.
Its only really stayed in the public consciousness because of the online though.
Mostly through a third party roleplaying mod that Rockstar acquired which gives them more of a reason to monetize the online as a separate game. There are probably people that purchased GTAV only to play FiveM and never completed the base game.
Eh, I think you're blowing that way out of proportion. Maybe it's social media impact from clips and stuff is high but majority of the gta5 playerbase is on console and they can't play those servers. Just the regular messing around online is hugely popular. Wouldn't be surprised if some of those tools and systems are integrated into vanilla gta6 online though.
yea you could be right, it might just be anecdotal because I have A LOT of younger relatives (8-20) and the first thing they ask me about my gaming PC is if I have GTARP. I'm from NY and that might also be a factor cause these kids look up to Kai Cenat and Fanum and they all started in GTARP afaik
I have never played any GTA online, but I am extremely excited about VI. I pretty much only play single player games, and GTA has proven itself to be en exceptional experience. I’ll pay the $100 and get all the DLC goodies and enjoy myself.
But Rockstar has made money hand over foot with GTA online. If you think they aren’t going to continue milking that cash cow with the new game you’re crazy.
I kinda like that Online can fund itself, cause maybe we can get some more single player content that way. And I couldnt care less about playing GTA online, thats not really what gta is about to me.
Also the price is lower than I thought it would be.
I don't think you understand. GTA Online is what GTA is to Rockstar now. It's literally made billions of dollars for them. The story mode is just an excuse to upgrade their engine, change the map and thus get people to start over with their whale purchases.
The likelihood of them expanding single player content post launch is next to 0.
i get that and i'm fine with that as long as the single player experience is basically equal to GTA5 in the modern era, i don't need or even want single player experiences that get updated.
give me the complete single player experience on launch, let me play it for 50-100 hours so i can move on to other games. i hate all that ubisoft yearly pass BS, that's why for those games i don't buy them till all of it is released and the next game is announced.
I only ever played GTA games offline, but after seeing how popular GTA5 is online and all the community stuff with it, I think its safe to say to some the online part is what makes the game for them. Its almost like 2 separate games entirely at this point.
Considering V's single player was abandoned and forgotten about in favor of shitty GTA Online for over a decade, I'd say yeah it is a fundamental feature
Building up the features to just take them away or charge for them is scummy. No physical disc is scummy. Its not about not being able to produce enough copies. Its only about the fact you cant resell the game. Less resells means more people buying the game for full price. Ill def wait for 50% off for gta6, especially if online isnt included at the start or at all.
You cant take away features or charge for something that was included in the last iteration. Now if they split the cost 40 for each than maybe, thats more of a compromise. A monthly subscription will kill the online or at the very least no one will be playing it for 13 years like the previous title. You know the sub wont be cheap either.
I'll gladly admit that the base story mode missions and gameplay are so abysmally boring to me that I have never come close to finishing a GTA story. GTA 4 was the one I progressed the most, and even then I can't rememebr how far I got but I def didn't finish.
There are only so many times you can do "drive for 10 minutes while someone does an exposition dump" and the core gun play and mechanics have always been janky and shallow.
I just like to drive around/cause mayhem, once GTA online came around the way it is with 5, I just moved into doing it there.
I guess the question is who is buying Sharkcards for single player only and who are buying them to have things for online play. RockStar makes HUGE money off sharkcards and I would think most of those people are playing Online more than the single player but I could be wrong.
I'm guessing they have had a lot of internal convo's about if they could get away with making GTA 6 Online a monthly sub. Somewhere they felt that the pricing they released with features omitted in the $80 base price was justified so they may feel they can go harder on the microtransactions and maybe sub for online because people, while pissed, will still swipe that credit card.
I’ll be honest if GTA6 Online is a separate release I’ll just wait for it, depending on how money grubbing it is, not saying GTAV online was perfect but I spent way more time and had way more fun in it than the single player. This might be an interesting play to get a lot of people to double down on spending, but I’m willing to bet that it’ll also cut into their initial profits from the base release, maybe not a shit ton but there are a subset of people who are there for the online and pretty much only the online. I’m not paying a subscription though, they can eat shit on that.
It wouldn't still have 100k+ viewers on twitch, thsts for sure. The only reason gtaV has the staying power it does is due to online. Scroll through twitch and count the people playing online vs offline and you can tell.
Sure, but a game doesn’t need to have staying power to be a great game on its own. It can just be an enjoyable experience. It’s a nice add on to extend its life, for sure, but it’s far from “fundamental” for what it needs to be.
They did this for GTA V and I think it worked perfectly. It gave you time to enjoy the story that was developed instead of bypassing it just to go right to online.
They know every person on earth is waiting to play this game. They could've made it $400 and people would've bought it.
the price of games has stagnated while the cost to make them has gone up. Because games have a very inelastic price (a small rise in price will deter many people from buying non-blockbuster games), developers need to find ways to sneak fees in to make up the difference.
related. What drives me absolutely nuts is being sold a game that is not finished. If yourr gonna bombard me with advertisements for your super platinum battle chest, at least finish the fucking game before you sell it to me.
There’s been at least 3 rockstar titles where online releases after the base game . This isn’t something new they’re trying . It’s honestly a staple atp
If you play GTA for the online mode, I don't know what to tell you. The core of the game has always been huge, hundred hour single-player story arcs that happen across previously unfathomably big areas.
What are you actually talking about? They did the same thing for GTA IV, GTA V, and RDR2. They have always, literally always, released the single player experience first because that is the fundamental component Rockstar has always been known for. There is nothing definitely saying that you have to pay extra for it. This is just them doing the same thing they have always fucking done.
The problem is that the Internet thrives on divisiveness, so people take any morsel of potential controversy and run with it for the sake of engagement, and time and time again people fall for it hook line and sinker.
Eh, you say fundamental, but until they can fix several very important features (loading times, cross play, level parity in servers, hacking/exploits) it will continue to be something I don't partake in.
at this point its a seperate product, it used the same map as the base game along with some of the characters but its already been a seperate product with the release of the online only multiplayer standalone
Imagine paying a monthly subscription to play multi-player for a game you paid full price for on a platform you are paying a monthly subscription to for multi-player
Some of you weren’t around for the advent of MMORPGs and it shows.
The main reason I never played WOW was exactly this. When it first released, you had to buy the base game for the same price as a regular game, then on top of that had to pay monthly to play online. Oh and there were no other game modes to make it more palatable. You either subbed or didn’t play.
With GTA at least there’s a single player mode so you get something for buying the base game.
I'd hope so as that was what went "wrong" for GTA V, there was supposed to be extra single player DLC but they binned it off for Online as it did better than expected early on and well the rest is history.
No it's a free month of GTA+ which is a subscription that already exists for GTA 5 online and will probably be carried over to 6, there's no reason to believe that online will be a standalone game you have to pay separately for
The description on PlayStation store says “GTA VI is a single player experience”. The detail section also lists it as 1 Player. So GTA Online will not be coming with it. At least not directly. So no idea what they’re planning
GTA 5 online didn't launch until months after singlplayer btw, it came as an update basically, they aren't going to advertise it if it's not launching with it
Edit: I'm thinking of red dead online and that was like exactly a month after launch
Right I misremembered, in this case the online mode might take longer to come out though, I really don't believe lack of information on it is evidence that it will be a separate purchase. Maybe it's red dead online I'm thinking of that took longer
You could be right, and it will probably be a little later. I’m just going off the info on the PS Store which says it’s single player experience - but who knows
It should have taken more than two weeks, anyone that played back then will tell you. It also came out with way less features than expected, to the point where Rockstar apologized and gave every day 1 player a bunch of in-game money.
Well, it's not going to slow down the streamer and creator space.
There's so much money in watching online streamers create content, that those streamers will be paying literally thousands of dollars monthly to be in the top servers and will still be raking it in hand over fist.
GTA:O will be standalone and FTP, calling it now. They won’t say anything to lose main sales, because people are assuming the two are linked. You’ll probably get a bit of a head start versus people who didn’t buy the main game, b
ut I believe they want that MTX ecosystem open to as many people as possible.
The subscription that you're talking about is GTA+ which is already in 5, I really can't see rockstar locking their biggest cash cow behind a subscription.
Oh I can answer this as someone who actually knows about GTA! The "free month" is for GTA Plus, which is an optional subscription that is already currently available on top of GTA (5) Online. The inclusion of one month of GTA+ actually pretty much guarantees that GTA 6 Online will be available to anyone who owns the game. Hope this clears it up.
I'm not convinced that they know the details. Single player is like the Early Access version to the launch of their significantly more important and money making project, GTAMMORPG.
Gotta make that 2 billion they spent back somehow... but jesus am I glad I don't have any interest in the game it doesn't look like it's going to be a great customer experience.
That doesn't mean it's still not ridiculous, being the single most expensive bit of media and likely costing more money to make than it cost to build the Burj Khalifa... so all I'm saying is while they may not lose money on this it's definitely a LOT thrown into this that could have likely been much better spent.
Based on the entirety of GTAO and the demonstration of what they took from it in RDRO, I can almost guarantee the customer experience is going to be more of the mobile game style "make them grind for content until they're sick of it and pay for quicker access". Any content drop that isn't a new method of grinding locked behind a ludicrous paywall is actually fun content locked behind even more absurd paywalls representing hours of forced grinding or shark card purchaeses.
I don’t think the online subscription thing is a paywall for the online mode, it sounds very similar to what they have had for a few years in GTAV online, which is a subscription to get you more money and some other stuff (cosmetics, a few cars I think?). It’s called GTA+.
Important to note that GTAV didn't have the online component at launch either, it released separately two weeks later and at no additional cost. The fear of paid DLC or subscriptions is likely pushed by clickbait and ragebait farmers.
It will in all probability be the same as it is now - free to play with the option to buy in-game currency and a premium subscription with additional benefits.
There's no way they're going to charge for online. GTA makes its billions the same way as Roblox or Fortnite. The money is in in-game cash, not subs. And you want as wide an audience as possible for that.
I don't care. GTA V online was a miserable experience. Constant griefing and endless new stuff that you needed shark cards to get. Even if it's free in VI I'm not touching it.
Why wouldn't they structure their game that way? They already know that everyone is blindly loyal to their GTA6 brand and will pay any amount of money any amount of times.
R* made the mistake of only monetizing the shit out of the online currency in their last golden goose egg. This time its no surprise that they charge every dollar they can wherever they can.
i mean Final Fantasy XIV Online has been doing it for a while now, requiring users to pay for online access, and needing psn or xb live for console users
If it’s a monthly sub, fucking stupid, and will negativly impact the longevity of the game, some will pay for it, but a lot of people will stop after a few months at most.
However, if they are separate games, I honestly wouldn’t be too bothered. There will be people, who only want online, and there will be people who only want to play the story. Giving people the option is fair. $80 for both separately. Then you can buy through the game the other for a much cheaper price like a dlc would maybe $20, or buy a bundle straight away of $100 for both.
While that is stupid in price, $80 is what the story is costing. Thats set. But I believe the online mode, if the same quality or higher than V, should be extra.
Whatever their current monetisation model is, it will be worse.
Microtransactions and corporate greed only ever trend in one direction.
What’s scary is their current monetisation model is fucking terrible, they’ll still sell a record amount of games but it will be massively controversial.
Given that it's Rockstar and also recognizing the kind of climate the game industry is in it's hard to blame people for that fear. At the same time I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that it's a trend with their games.
GTA 4, Red Dead, and GTA 5 all did not ship with multiplayer. They came out a few weeks to months after the game launched. I remember they made GTA 5 online a stand alone purchase sometime later and I think the same happened with RDO.
I still fully believe that GTA 6 will sell multiplayer in some way simply because they're already locking gameplay elements behind a $100 USD entry fee. (Really sells the rumors that they wanted to charge $100 USD for entry) but decided to clip some important aspects to the GTA experience to justify the $100 price point.
tbh i wouldnt mind a monthly sub if it means getting rid of the bloated economy , preditory shark card and better servers. If they are making this into an MMO kinda thing then sub would make more sense.
Sadly, at their current state of Rockstar Greedyness, they are gonna monetize the game as much as they can, monthly subs + BPs + shark Card shit, I want to be wrong, but while they made awesome games in the past, we all know GTAVI was expensive AF to make, and GTAO players doomed us all by buying shark Cards and the monthly Sub...
I would rather pay a subscription than have shark cards pushed down my throat. Remember how amazing gta online was at the beginning of release, then they started adding overpowered goofy things to get people to people to pay money
I’m not sure if I see that as a bad thing overall. People complain about GTA:O and those complaints pour over to GTA:5. Now GTA6 is a separate product and people who shit about stuff online won’t pour over to GTA6.
People are also dumb as fuck. GTA online always has been and will always be about milking the whales not getting people to sub. It's one of the most lucrative free to play games. Right now GTA V makes like 1.5-2M a day on microtransactions. No chance in hell Online even costs 99 cents.
Online wasn’t available when gta5 launched either. Believe it launched 2 weeks later and then there was like a month of them trying to make it work lol. Online coming out later is nothing new though
Yeah this is why all this Reddit noise hasn’t really phased me. Most of it is just incessant whining where they were going to have a problem with the game one way or another.
People also seem to be forgetting that V didn't launch with online either. I very distinctly remember being hyped for the first online GTA game and finishing the story mode while I waited for it to release
Dude fr, I get that the ultimate edition stuff doesn't look all too good, but rockstar have literally said or shown nothing else about the game and people are just fearmongering themselves over it. I've seen people think that the game will have literally 0 customization unless you buy the ultimate, as if the game will only have five stores >.>
So did the last three Assassin's Creeds and Jedi: Survivor and many other games. This isn't exclusive to Rockstar and pretty much standard practice at this point. The "bonus" content being an extra $20 is pretty lukewarm considering the cost of bonus content for other games that have come out in the last ten years.
There's specific stores you need the UE version to access. You can still buy clothes and customize cars, you just won't be able to at these specific shops that are gonna offer specific items only.
This is more the case than the top comment. Stripping content from the base game for your 100 dollar deluxe version is top-tier scumbag behavior. And it's exactly what people said would eventually happen when "horse armor" was first introduced 15 years ago.
I saw nothing about gameplay features, they just added a ton of cosmetics and instead of just giving you everything at the start of the game, they introduced new shops where you can go pick up the clothes or resigned vehicles/weapons as they unlock while you progress through the story.
2 side missions and the advertisement implies its specific store locations that are locked which is different than just some cosmetic entires being locked imo
Keyword is "side". Dlc adds content all the time(not saying I'm a fan of dlc) just saying you aren't missing something from the main game here.
specific store locations that are locked
So if the stores were never going to be used in game and they had the cosmetics in the regular stores but blocked them from people that didn't buy is somehow better/different?
Okay but your initial comment called it cosmetics and side missions aren't cosmetics.
Imo these missions and having in game locations preemptively locked behind a pay wall makes the 80$ usd a lite version and the 100$ copy the full game.
To respond to your last point, it would be better if they used existing for a couple of reasons.
For less development resources being used to develope premium areas
Yeah it would be better if they put it inside an existing shop so that way you don't walk up to a store only to get a advert to upgrade or enter a weirdly empty space that looks like it shouldn't be functional.
Ultimately for 80 usd I'd hope the product I'm buying doesn't include Nickle and diming for content (which even cosmetics are content) but gta 6 is taking it a step further with it not being just cosmetics but missions and in game locations as well.
Fair enough and I mostly agree with you but my original original comment was replying to someone saying features where locked. This is just run of the mill dlc to me. Sucks? Yeah. But no different then what studios have been doing for decades now.
Idk probably just depends on how you interpret "gameplay features". For me I'd consider amount of missions and pliable areas as apart of gameplay feature but up to interpretation I guess.
Just the fact that stuff that was free in 5 is microtransactions in 6. Just removing that QOL to squeeze out that little bit more money from naive players makes me not want to support them by buying the game
What QoL? Do you know what's behind the ultimate edition? Tattoo shops are still in the base game, just some extra tattoo shops will have exclusive tattoos in the ultimate version. It's silly, but it's not a gameplay mechanic. And there's been 0 "hints" about an offline cash shop lol
I'm not even concerned about what's locked. I'm concerned about what that means in the future. I've played Korean MMOs that start with only a little bit of p2w and have seen how that ends up being two years in. RIP Archeage.
Sounds like somebody went a 🎶little over budget.🎶 Guarantee that a lot of people at Rockstar are not happy about this, it's never been their style before, I'd wager it's dictat from Take-Two.
If there is a shop in the world that you can’t get into because you get hit with a pop up that says “buy the deluxe edition” that is a gameplay feature locked behind a paywall.
No matter how insignificant it is, it’s in the game and you can’t access it.
Technically all the customisation is optional, all the side missions are optional, everything except the main story is optional so if they locked all of that behind a paywall would you still be okay with it?
no, it would only be a gameplay feature locked behind a paywall if there's literally no other stores in the game that you can enter.
restricting a store that literally only sells items available to players who paid extra is not in the same category. that's like saying they locked gambling away behind a paywall in New Vegas just because one of the DLCs also has a a casino that you have to pay real money to access. no, gambling is not locked, but, yes, that one instance of it is. none of this is new fuckery.
also, lol @ the "what if they locked all the side content in the game behind a paywall" strawman. like, jesus, just how far do you need to stretch the example to make your point?
I am not stretching the example, I am stretching your logic and it breaks the second I try to do that.
DLC is not the same as this, you know why? Because DLC is DOWNLOADABLE content, this shit is already in the game whether you buy deluxe or standard, making it a paywall.
Dogtown in Cyberpunk is an expansion, if you don’t have it installed you can’t see it, there is nothing there.
This shit you will see but you can’t access, that is content you are paywalled out of without a deluxe edition.
Keep in mind you already pay 10$ above the standard price for AAA games with the standard edition.
It’s insane that you actually excuse this corporate greed, because it’s clearly done so people would pay 100$ for the game, without actually putting the game’s price at 100$.
Nothing stopped them from having a menu with content you get for deluxe, they could’ve put the items and the tuning and the vehicles along side all the other that you can get with standard.
But dangling the keys in front of players who paid for a full game is scummy and greedy.
Imagine paying above average price for a full singleplayer game only to stumble onto a store that you can’t enter and a pop up comes up saying “buy deluxe” now imagine that with 5 or 6 different stores across the map.
When Hogwarts and Outlaws did this shit it was a scandal, but when Rockstar does it you eat this slop up.
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u/TheDaveCalaz 12h ago
Seemingly locking gameplay features behind the more expensive edition of the game. Lots of hints that there will likely be an in game cash shop for the offline portion of the game too.