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In case you didn’t know or didn’t notice, GTA V, Rockstar’s last entry in the franchise, has now outlasted the previous console generation with no sequel in sight.

For reference, GTA V came out in 2013 on the PS3 and Xbox 360. It’s seven years old. While it’s certainly a behemoth in the gaming industry, there’s something fundamentally wrong about that fact.

MMO’s like World of Warcraft and Runescape have lived longer lives, but those are also drastically different games with far more relevant content than what we’ve seen in Rockstar’s titular franchise. In those games, new content comes far more slowly, but there’s also a lot more of it. How many expansions has World of Warcraft even had at this point? How different is a new player’s experience now than someone that started when it released in 2004?

Now, compare that to GTA V. If you’re screaming “there’s no comparison!” then congratulations, you’ve found my point. In seven years, there’s been nothing significantly changed about a new player’s experience in GTA V, except that they’re now just as likely to get blown up by a space laser as a rocket launcher.

The world of GTA Online hasn’t changed at all; there are flying cars and other wild vehicles and weapons, but the base experience and world hasn’t changed. The single-player experience? That’s been the exact same since the game released.

On one hand, it makes sense. Rockstar is a business, and a business that needs to pay its employees and other expenses. I mean, they even developed and released Red Dead Redemption 2. But it’s been seven years, and GTA V shows no signs of being dropped for something newer. It’s possible the developer has simply turned the majority of its employees to a new title, and the one’s left on GTA V are still able to churn out new weapons, vehicles, and heists, but it seems far more likely to me that Rockstar isn’t leaving GTA Online, and probably won’t until the game stops making them mountains of money each month.

But on the other hand, GTA Online will never die. At least, not in its current iteration. The people still playing after all this time play because they have all the money and all the cool things, either through playing the game or using real money to buy fake money to buy all the cool things. They won’t give that up, and there’s too much to be done in the game thanks to the community creation tools alongside what Rockstar puts out.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing wrong with a business making money. But I think there’s something fundamentally wrong about a game being playable on three different console generations, and the only significant difference is load times and render distances. The only saving grace at this point is that the game isn’t still going for full price, but that’s not really saying or expecting much for a game that’s coming up on it’s tenth birthday.

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