As you might expect, GTA Online updates are going to be slowing down a great deal after Rockstar Games releases Red Dead Redemption 2 later this year. The game, as the biggest Rockstar release since GTA 5 in 2013, is likely going to be taking up the studio’s attention for a long time.
Grand Theft Auto Online is the multiplayer component of Grand Theft Auto 5, allowing players to run around Los Santos committing various crimes or playing games against one another, whether it’s two corporations fighting against one another to deliver contraband, taking sports cars along impossible courses in Cunning Stunts, or having a good old-fashioned GTA Race or deathmatch somewhere else.
However, GTA Online updates will undoubtedly falter in the face of a new property like Red Dead Redemption 2, especially since there’s a good possibility that Rockstar has put a multiplayer component in that as well. The original Red Dead Redemption also had a multiplayer component, allowing races, shootouts, and free-roams along with cooperative mission play, and hopefully Red Dead Redemption 2 will follow in its footsteps.
Either way, Red Dead Redemption 2 is going to be Rockstar’s focus for a good while after it releases, to the unfortunate detriment of content production in GTA Online updates. The slow pace of working on GTA Online might even persuade more players to try out Red Dead Redemption 2, moving from GTA Online to the Wild West.
Whether that means that GTA Online will be surviving Red Dead Redemption 2’s release and multiplayer remains to be seen. While Rockstar would obviously prefer for people to split their time between the two games, there’s people who play GTA Online that may leave it in favor of Red Dead in order to get a change of scenery.
Red Dead Redemption 2 will be releasing in the spring of 2018 for the Xbox One and Playstation 4, so we’ll have to find out how its multiplayer stacks up to Grand Theft Auto’s then.
