Los Santos and Blaine County just got a little more livelier.
Rockstar Games has revealed some new details about the multiplayer mode to Grand Theft Auto V, Grand Theft Auto Online (coming as a free download for GTA V owners on Oct. 1). When it launches, up to 16 players can roam the cities and countryside from GTA V. Instead of using characters you’ve already seen, you’ll create your own using the Character Creator. You can earn cash, Reputation (like experience points), or both from doing side activities: playing tennis, taking on missions, and other open-world hijinks — robbing an armored car, for instance — are available.
If you don’t have the time to earn money the old-fashion way, you can also spend real money for GTA$ (GTA bucks?) through the in-game store. This falls in line with what Eurogamer reported earlier today about in-game microtransactions. Rockstar, however, assures players that the “game and its economy have been designed and balanced for the vast majority of players who will not buy extra cash.” Cash from the single-player mode doesn’t carry over to GTA Online.
The company also revealed its tentative plan for free content updates to GTA Online. This will include the Content Creator (a set of tools for tweaking various multiplayer matches), the Beach Bum Pack (four new vehicles, two new weapons, and hundreds of new clothing options), a Capture the Flag mode, and Heists (planning and executing elaborate crimes with other players).
Since GTA Online is bigger than any other multiplayer game Rockstar has done before, it’s being cautious, reminding players that they might see bugs and glitches when it launches next week.
“The first couple of weeks we expect to be heavily focused on tuning the experience as it goes from internal testing to the reality of being played by tons of people in the real world so that all the usual teething problems for an online game are overcome,” the developer said in the blog post. “We hope it will all run incredibly smoothly, but please bear with us if it doesn’t, and help us fix any and all problems!”
Grand Theft Auto V sales topped $1 billion within its first three days at retail. All this demand has put a lot of pressure on Rockstar’s servers, leading to connection problems with its Social Club service (for looking at multiplayer stats and teaming up with people) and the iFruit companion app (training your dog and customizing cars in GTA V) on iOS devices.