This might sound a little outrageous, but could GTA Online be shut down in 2022 - or at some point in the future beyond that? Grand Theft Auto 6 is going to arrive eventually and when it does, where does this leave GTA Online? It might be shut down, but it could become even more independent from the mainline Grand Theft Auto games. Here's what we know so far...
Is GTA Online going to get shut down in 2022?
At the moment, Grand Theft Auto V lends almost all of its assets to GTA Online and GTA Online is the only thing Rockstar Games seems to care about anymore. The recently-released 'The Contract' expansion is the perfect example of this - it's an expansion that would suit the single-player experience well but it's been made into a GTA Online update.
GTA Online still remains Grand Theft Auto V's online mode, though. It launched alongside it, just like Warzone did with Modern Warfare, but it hasn't really drifted off into its own sphere quite so eloquently as people would hope for. Los Santos is only so big and a lot of people know that map like the back of their hand. It's safe to say that we're due a change - but should that change involve shutting down GTA Online fully and starting new?
GTA Online is constantly updated with new weapons, new cars, new clothes... Just lots of content in general. Grand Theft Auto 5, however, is not. This isn't a bad thing, because Grand Theft Auto 5 is fine on its own and it doesn't need updates. However, a Live Service game like GTA Online does.
We don't know a lot about Grand Theft Auto 6 - it isn't even officially on the way - but it seems highly unlikely that it will be set in Los Santos like Grand Theft Auto 5.
We've never seen consecutive Grand Theft Auto games released with the same map and this spells trouble for GTA Online. It would be a step backwards if GTA Online didn't update alongside the new mainstream Grand Theft Auto game - so this could mean GTA Online as we know it is shutting down. However, it's unlikely that it will be gone for good. We could see an expansion that adds a whole new map to the experience - or we could see GTA Online finally set free from the shackles of Grand Theft Auto 5 and become its own experience. You can download GTA Online without Grand Theft Auto 5 already, but it's hardly its own game just yet.
If GTA Online is shutting down, there's a long time before that happens. You're probably safe to invest some money into some Shark Cards. There's at least another few years of GTA Online, yet.