With GTA Online, Rockstar provided its fans with new content for over a decade and kept them engaged while the studio worked on GTA 6. But did you know that the mode took over 20 years of development?
What is so special about GTA Online? After GTA 5 had finished telling its story, Rockstar introduced a new mode: GTA Online. This mode allows its fans to create a protagonist with whom they can live an outlaw life in Los Santos. Besides heists, drug trading, or mini-games, players can also simply enjoy life in Los Santos and play together with their friends.
For many, GTA Online was the game that kept them engaged for over a decade, and Rockstar put effort into it – many free DLCs brought tons of content into the game.
You might think that an online mode in a game would not be a problem by today’s standards. But Rockstar had already tried to implement an online mode with GTA 3.
GTA 3 was supposed to have an online mode
What information has been revealed? Obbe Vermeij, a former developer of Rockstar Games who worked in this studio for over 14 years, provides new information about the online mode of GTA. According to him, the studio had already planned to implement an online mode with GTA 3.
This is what he described on X.com: ‘For GTA 3, I developed a prototype for a simple deathmatch. Players could kill each other, pull them out of cars, and respawn in the city. It was promising… but we ran out of time. We needed lobbies, network-capable scripts, etc. We decided to reduce the effort.’
But that was not the end of it. With Vice City, it was supposed to be done this time. According to Vermeij, they even hired developers to take care of the multiplayer code. Unfortunately, the deadlines were tight again, so the project was canceled once more.
For GTA San Andreas, the topic was not taken up again, as it was the last title on the platform and not worth the effort – a co-op mode was supposed to be enough at the time.
With GTA 4, they finally succeeded. Four programmers and many level designers were hired to create the mode. However, it did not resemble the mode that Rockstar had envisioned. That only started with the release of GTA Online in 2013.
Will there be GTA Online for GTA 6? Although this mode has not yet been confirmed by Rockstar itself, it is strongly assumed that the developers are working on an alternative online mode.
GTA Online has brought Rockstar a lot of revenue and financed the development of GTA 6 over the years. So it is only logical that the developers are creating a new, better, and above all modern successor to the hit. You can find more about GTA6 here: GTA 6: Release, trailer, and map – The most important information about the action game
