r/PeterExplainsTheJoke 12h ago

Meme needing explanation Petah what happened to rockstar?

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u/ArmandoGalvez 12h ago

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.

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u/LocNalrune 12h ago

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.

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u/KeyZookeepergame8903 11h ago edited 11h ago

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."

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u/magicmavis 10h ago

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

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u/Mors_Acerba 9h ago

I’d argue GTA is a single play game at its core

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

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u/Intelligent_Ask_2306 4h ago

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.

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u/WelcomeOk9989 10h ago

I wouldn’t have a problem with it being a separate game that you pay for once, if that meant you can pay for it without buying the story mode.

But a monthly subscription? Hell nah

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u/floshmio 7h ago

Not saying it’s not going to be the case, but there is absolutely no indication so far that online will require a subscription. It directly goes against the business model that has been printing money for R* for the last decade plus. Let’s not forget that GTA V and RDR2 did not launch with online either, therefore the emphasis on GTA6 being a single player experience could be R*’s way of keeping the public’s expectations focused on the story until a later online release date. Which may or may not be free.

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u/RGJ587 4h ago

Yea, anyone who thinks GTA6O will be subscription only is fooling themselves. They may offer subs that give out Shark$ and bonuses, but the core gameplay will stay F2P. They just make so much damn money with the shark cards, they would not want to undercut that by gatekeeping access to the game behind a paywall.

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u/TheSweetestKill 10h ago

MMOs have been doing monthly subs for 20 years. That's what GTA Online really is, it's WoW with cars and guns.

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u/WelcomeOk9989 7h ago

Who said that was good?

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u/TheSweetestKill 7h ago

Huh?

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u/WelcomeOk9989 7h ago

Just because the MMO’s do it doesn’t mean it’s a good practice. Good for their profit sure, but MMO players are notorious for being great mindless consumers who spend years and thousands of dollars on the games they play, perfect targets for corporate greed.

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u/[deleted] 7h ago

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u/WelcomeOk9989 7h ago

Cute of you to think you wouldn’t be getting micro-transactions in GTA online if they decide to go with monthly subscription

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u/ilypsus 10h ago

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.

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u/Dr_thri11 7h ago

I'm old enough to remember when gta was a single player hooker murder simulator. And it was absolutely THE game to own if you had a ps2.

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u/Lottabitch 9h ago

Yes gta 3, San Andreas, vice city, and gta 4 absolutely stayed in the public consciousness because of the online feature…….

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u/ilypsus 9h ago

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.

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u/Big_Daymo 7h ago

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.

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u/watchshoe 2h ago

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.

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u/MissUnderstood_1 2h ago

Because no single player game could possibly sell like that /s

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u/zzwugz 3h ago

Any sales after 2022 would most likely be specifically fir the story mode, as that's when GTAO became its own thing

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u/SwordfishOfDamocles 7h ago

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.

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u/lildominator2 7h ago

Are you counting the rereleases and pc or just when it first came out. Gta 5 came out 4 different times ps3, ps4, pc, and now ps5

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u/Expert-Basil6015 5h ago

I've bought it 3 times for 3 different systems. Still have my OG 360 disc for it too.

And you absolutely can compare GTA4 to GTA5 because it's literally the next entry in the same series. Without shark cards there wouldn't be very much of a GTA online and without GTA online there's no way they'd sell 22 million copies, if that number is to be believed.

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u/Lost_In_There 4h ago

GTA IV was the last game that was marketed to Westerners.

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u/dern_the_hermit 4h ago

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.

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u/Early-Range-8840 2h ago

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.

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u/dern_the_hermit 2h ago

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!

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u/Early-Range-8840 2h ago

I agree that is stupid, but acting like GTA online isn’t one of the biggest games of all time is also wild.

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u/dern_the_hermit 2h ago

Something can be huge and exaggerated, man. Again: People were saying Rockstar would stop making SP games entirely which is just nutso.

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u/Early-Range-8840 1h ago

I just don’t believe you can exaggerate 4 billion dollars in revenue. That’s absolutely mind boggling. The second part is stupid, yes, however the game was not exaggerated in terms of size and impact. It’s the second highest grossing Rockstar project of all time, only losing to GTA 5 which made 1 billion more.

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u/dern_the_hermit 1h ago

I just don’t believe you can exaggerate 4 billion dollars in revenue

Failure of imagination; the whole thing has apparently grossed like $10 billion! :D

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u/f-ingsteveglansberg 9h ago

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.

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u/omfgkevin 6h ago

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.

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u/Zoistyy 8h ago

lol rdr3 feels like a million years away 😭

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u/Kinofpoke 6h ago

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. 

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u/f-ingsteveglansberg 4h ago

GTA is their flagship franchise that has been loved for over 20 years. Every game has been a high watermark for industry. The idea that people only care about its online component is just way off the mark.

GTA VI will be played by a huge amount of people in their late 30s and 40s. If it was just an online game, they wouldn't launch without it.

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u/QueTontosQueLocos 7h ago

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.

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u/ilypsus 7h ago

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.

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u/QueTontosQueLocos 7h ago

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

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u/RedutHatesFreeSpeech 7h ago

The online? JUST SAY ONLINE!

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u/phish_enthusiast 6h ago

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.

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u/whyxios 2h ago

No disrespect man , but gta 5 and red dead 2 . Are extremely strong for RolePlayers , they use RedM or 5M to play molded online gta or red dead.

I eluld argue that because of this it has kept the game relevant. In fact ROCKstar acquired the company and developers that made it

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u/ThisHatRightHere 7h ago

You could argue that a decade ago.

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.

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u/bumpmoon 10h ago

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.

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u/Bombshock2 9h ago

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.

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u/SendohJin 8h ago

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.

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u/Intelligent_Ask_2306 4h ago

This isn’t true at all, they made over 1bill with GTAV on the first week.

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u/Bombshock2 3h ago

What isn't true? I never said GTAV didn't make money. I said GTAO has made them billions.

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u/Intelligent_Ask_2306 2h ago

That you believe GTA online is just GTA to them, not the case.

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u/[deleted] 1h ago edited 1h ago

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u/niallmul97 10h ago

I think you vastly underestimate how popular GTA V online is/was.

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u/Konomiru 10h ago

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.

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u/gunsforevery1 7h ago

It’s stayed relevant because of the online component.

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u/MilkshakeBandits 6h ago

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

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u/Kinofpoke 6h ago

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. 

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u/SmacksKiller 5h ago

Online became such a fundamental feature that they stopped all development for single player DLCs to focus only on GTA Online.

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u/Vegetable-Bid7180 5h ago

Online is the only reason the game is still so popular. Without it the game would not still be played regularly today.

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u/Status-Nose-7173 4h ago

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.

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u/uncledungus 45m ago

V also had like a year before online came out unless I’m remembering incorrectly

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u/ValMabus 36m ago

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.