Rockstar is seemingly playing every goodwill card they've got lined up right now and while these acts of kindness are awesome, we're getting a tad worried that our estimates for the costs of gunrunning might have been too low! Rockstar has never been so liberal with bonuses and free money in GTA Online as they are now, and that suggests that we'll be needing a lot of it in the near future...
We've had a couple of cheap minor DLCs, refunds on returning player content and most recently tax rebates, all the while players are randomly getting various amounts of free cash, some of whom have racked up millions through these giveaways. Now, after all of this, Rockstar went ahead and slapped a double RP and cash promotion on the most requested of activities.
Through the 15th of May, all heist setups and finales will deal out double RP and, more importantly, GTA$. For the longest time, heists were the backbone of any attempt to grind up a large amount of cash in-game, with CEO work only recently toppling it, at least to an extent — heists still enjoy massive popularity.
The game features five heists of increasing difficulty, each with a series of set-up missions to prepare you for the finale and the big payout. These made up GTA Online's quasi-end game content for a long time before CEO work came into the picture, but are still considered some of the most challenging aspects of the game.
Starting with the Fleeca Job, a smaller bank heist, players work their way through a daring escape plan in Prison Break, a theft of data in Humane Labs Raid, drug trafficking in Series A Funding and finally a big-time bank robbery to top things off in the Pacific Standard Job.
While playing with randoms isn't nearly as much of a nightmare as it's made out to be, going through a complete heist is still pretty difficult without a team you know and can communicate with — especially now that the fan-favorite Kuruma glitch has been patched out of the Pacific Standard Job.
While the individual setups and finales offer double the payout, the maddeningly difficult Criminal Mastermind Challenge does not fall under this promotion. The bonus for playing through all five heists in order, with the same team, with zero deaths is still GTA$ 10 million. However, adding that to the cumulative double payouts from the heists themselves, if someone were to pull off the Criminal Mastermind now, they would make around 30 million. Keep in mind that the CM challenge can only be completed once per character, so you can't get the 10 million bonus several times.
If you want to make the most of this promotion while it lasts, take a look at our GTA Online Heists Guide the takings in order to avoid any conflict arising from the matter. Going into these heists with prior knowledge of how the mechanics work for each phase is key to successfully finishing them (relatively) quickly.
If you've already hit your criminal mastermind bonus once before, you don't really have reason to not grind Pacific Standard exclusively, since it has the highest payout of any heist. As long as the promotion lasts, heists have been catapulted back to the top of the money making food-chain, leaving humbling CEO work for a week.
All additional bonuses from the previous round are still active too, meaning you can grab a bunch of vehicles including the Buzzard and MC property, in addition to the still on-going double RP and cash promo for clubhouse contracts.
The end date of this event hints at what we hope could be the release date for gunrunning. Rockstar is known for stretching out official announcements until the last minute, so next Tuesday is still viable for a gunrunning launch. All GTA Online DLC is kicked off on a Tuesday, and they're usually announced on the Thursday prior. It's entirely possible we'll get that coveted announcement in two days and the actual update in a week.
This double cash promo for heists right before the launch of gunrunning further fuels the theory that the new DLC will be pretty expensive. Rockstar has, on rare occasion, given players a slight boost right before a major DLC, and each time said DLC ended up being on a whole other price level. Based on what we're seeing, gunrunning might end up blowing Import/Export out of the water.
We still have no clue as to what the exact content of gunrunning will be, as no reliable leaks (or any leaks at all, really) have been posted. Beyond a wishlist of weaponized vehicles, all we have is a vague description of a new weapon smuggling mechanic. Hopefully we'll learn more in the coming days.
