Grand Theft Auto 5 and Online both turned 7 years old just a while ago, and yet here we are still writing about them day by day.
It's not just us either, with the game popping up in headlines again and again across the internet, and cases still lining store shelves.
Some people who haven't bought it yet — and really, how many of those are left? — might be wonder, is GTA 5 still worth getting in 2020?
Unless a game is an MMO or becomes an e-sport hit that developers choose to infinitely iterate upon instead of follow up with a sequel, games tend to fizzle out in terms of relevance and mass appeal 7 years after release, even if they're the biggest AAA releases around. Sure, people will still mention them and play them occasionally, and some will even buy them if they missed out at the time, but they're not part of the zeitgeist. Things are very different with GTA 5.
The game is as relevant and popular as ever — even moreso than before. Breaking every convention that game shelf life usually ascribes to, GTA 5 and Online only ever saw an increase in active players and sales as time went on, following the initial spike at launch. Every year Rockstar will share, once or twice, that the highest concurrent player count record was broken. Every quarter the sales metric is updated with millions of shipped copies.
We're going to mostly focus on GTA Online here, since the question "is X worth buying?" doesn't really make much sense for single player games. Does it interest you? Then get it! GTA 5 is an award winning experience for a reason, full of memorable characters, absolutely overflowing with content and more personality than you'd expect. In technical terms, GTA 5 still holds up in the graphics department too, hardly showing its age on current consoles and higher-end PCs.
When it comes to multiplayer games that are several years old, the question becomes valid. One might wonder whether Online is running the risk of being shut down either due to lack of interest — which we already established isn't a threat — or because a new game will soon take its place. You can rest assured, GTA Online is here to stay!
Rockstar Games announced that GTA 5 and Online will be re-released on Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 in 2021, with Online splitting off and continuing its life as a standalone free-to-play title, owing to its ever increasing popularity.
Since the majority of profit Rockstar gains from GTA 5 comes in from Shark Card sales in Online, this makes a lot of sense — and also allows Online to live on whenever the time comes for GTA 6 to be launched. Rockstar has also committed itself to continue content support for GTA Online indefinitely — they'd be silly not to, considering how popular it still is.
If you're considering getting into GTA 5 and Online now, you've picked a time as good as any. The game is more popular than ever, the content you get has been bolstered by 7 years' worth of constant DLC updates and it's very, very far from being on its last legs. One could say GTA 5 is like fine wine, and it only gets better with age.
