Grand Theft Auto: Online

Grand Theft Auto Online was released two weeks after the release of Grand Theft Auto V.  And although Rockstar Games had taken precautions to make sure the online functionality would be solid, as GTA Online became available, servers crashed and people who were able to connect, suffered great lag, time outs and disconnections.    These issues we’re not easily resolved and continued to cause issues for a number of months after the release.  After the server issues had been resolved players started getting very excited waiting on the much anticipated “Heists” update. 

Throughout GTA Online players can explore the open world of Los Santos as they have done during the single player game.  The differences being that players create their own characters and can connect with anyone from around the world and together complete missions, compete in death matches, or just cause carnage to other players who are wanting to complete missions.  The Online world can also be closed off to anyone except your friends who you can invite for a more private and personal experience.  Players are also able to purchase apartments to live in and keep collections of modified cars in their personal garage using their in-game cash that they have collected from completing missions or looting from dead players.

Rockstar have continually updated their Online game by giving players free content with the ‘Beach Bum Update’ which gave new cosmetic items and vehicles for players to use, but as the months rolled by, players were still awaiting the release of the online heists and most people were starting to believe that Rockstar Games would never come through and release this anticipated update.  Some YouTube channels decided to create their own heists like RoosterTeeth’s ‘Let’s Play’ channel.

Online Heists were finally released on 10 March 2015 prior to the games release on PC.  Players were finally able to complete complicated, multi-tiered missions, with their friends to earn large cash rewards and mission specific vehicles.  Since this release ‘Twitch’ has  seen a massive increase of both people streaming GTA Online and people actually watching people play, with on average of 60,000+ people viewing GTA content each day.