With Grand Theft Auto 6 due to launch November 19, speculation is at a fever pitch about what the game will be like — and whether it’ll actually hit that release date after numerous delays. But one of the biggest questions around 2026’s most anticipated game is what its online component will look like. In typically secretive fashion, Rockstar has not even confirmed that there will be an online component to GTA 6, though given the success of the current iteration of GTA Online, it’s widely assumed that there will be.
GTA Online is still going strong, and is currently in the midst of its annual weed-themed 420 event, which runs until April 29. According to a recent hack of Rockstar’s financial data, GTA Online was still pulling in an average of $1.3 million per day between September 2025 and April 2026. The hack didn’t reveal any plot details about GTA 6, or anything specific about the company’s future plans for the wider GTA ecosystem. But it did reveal that GTA Online is an even bigger money-maker than was already assumed. And that gives us a new jumping-off point to make some educated guesses (or harebrained speculation) about what Rockstar has up its sleeves here.
There are two distinct possibilities: Rockstar launches an all-new GTA Online that’s set in the world of GTA 6, or events and characters from GTA 6 will be integrated into the existing GTA Online. There is also a remote third possibility: GTA Online continues as an offshoot of the world of GTA 5 and has no crossover at all with GTA 6. This seems highly implausible when you consider the fact that Rockstar clearly likes making money and has a formidable talent for doing so. So let’s dive a little deeper into those first two possibilities:
Rockstar reveals an all-new GTA Online
This is the more exciting but less plausible option. We know that Rockstar is both wildly ambitious and notoriously secretive, and the budget for GTA 6 is rumored to be in the billions. Maybe they’ve been building this new and improved GTAO alongside the base game, and that’s what the former Read Dead Online team has been working on since Rockstar sunsetted the game back in July 2022.
Does that mean Rockstar has been cooking up a new-gen online sandbox to rival Fortnite and Minecraft alongside the most anticipated single-player game of all time? If so, that would be very cool. And they could charge a lot of money for it. But reinventing two genres at once — the single-player blockbuster and the live-service experience — is a pretty tall order, even for a company as accomplished as Rockstar. Honestly, the more I think about it, the less likely it seems. So let’s explore the other option.
Rockstar integrates GTA 6 content into the existing GTA Online
We know that the current iteration of GTA Online is alive and thriving to the tune of $1.3 million per day. Its Steam concurrent player numbers are consistently in the mid-to-high five figures. That hefty playerbase is a big source of passive income that Rockstar is not going to want to lose. But pushing players into a new game that may require new hardware probably would alienate a significant chunk of them, especially when the audience seem to like the old game just fine. That’s especially true at a time when console and component prices are consistently going up.
The current GTAO runs on most current and past-gen hardware, with the exception of Nintendo Switch and Switch 2. But GTA 6 (presumably) uses a more advanced version of Rockstar’s bespoke graphics engine, and thus far the studio has only announced the game will launch for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. We still haven’t heard any official word on a PC release, let alone past-gen ports. Keeping GTA Online in its current form would allow Rockstar to give players on PS4, Xbox One, and PC access to some kind of GTA 6 content as soon as possible — potentially without even purchasing the base game, let alone a new console.
There is absolutely no reason to suspect that any of this GTA 6 content would be “free” or even “cheap.” A standalone copy of GTA Online (without GTA 5) currently retails for between $10 and $20 depending on the day and the retailer, though the game is further monetized through microtransactions in the form of Shark Cards and GTA+ subscriptions. Rockstar has a fine line to walk here, though. Adding fresh content tied to GTA 6 could get more people playing Online and potentially expand the reach of what promises to be a massive pop-culture moment. But any content that’s too duplicative risks cannibalizing sales of the new game, while mere cosmetic additions would be slammed as a lazy cash grab.
An all-new version of GTA Online runs the risk of being a walled garden, but keeping the old version alive circumvents that. This option is far less exciting from a creative standpoint, but it does feel like the safer bet. Heck, the team wouldn’t even need to integrate a new Vice City map right away. Maybe Jason and Lucia go on a vacation in Los Santos, and wacky crimes ensue. Either way, if GTA 6 remains on target for that Nov. 19 launch, Rockstar can’t keep those plans a secret for much longer.
The horndogs on the GTA 6 subreddit actually raise some pretty interesting points
Fans are wondering just how naughty Rockstar’s sequel will get
