If you think about it, it's not weird they might charge money. Having these servers running with everything they put in them do cost money. They won't be able to keep them going on the one time payment you put in when you buy GTA. Remember this is going to be around for many years to come. A closer example is this server. Natbyte pays the costs of them from his own pocket. We help him with donations, but they won't cover the costs forever. If the server grew, and he needed more server space and he couldn't keep it running with his own economy, he would either charge a subscription or take the server down, right? I'm sure you can understand why rockstar might charge money in the future, but for now they are letting us enjoy it for free.
Like I said the multiplayer itself is 100% free.. Rockstar is NOT a company like EA that tries to squeeze as much money as possible out of the customers and consumers. They actually listen to the community and don't charge ridiculous amounts for stupid addons, and when they do it is gamechanging. I'm sure a few addons will be available for purchase but it is free to play multiplayer.
I can give examples of where free multiplayer has servers, but no subscription. Such as: any Call of Duty game. Any game that has online multiplayer, every other game ever that isn't an MMORPG. Being R* with GTAV is like having a cheat code to unlimited money. Don't worry. they can keep the servers running.
I'm actually going to disagree on some of this. Yes, there are of course online games that are free, but not that many require as much performance as the GTA Online servers. will need. Gta will be very huge, very detailed, with a whole lot of stuff to do. Much much more than any free to play online game that I know. Everything you do in the world you can do with other people. Imagine how many players will be playing at once. You've got 16 players in a world, where everyone have their own stats and virtual life with their own apartments and cars etc. It's good that it's free right now, but I can't see how it can remain that way after say 5 years.
They wont make you cost. Just like when you buy a Cod game you get online for free. But with GTA V you get it for free just not when it comes out.
Lets hope so. I do of course hope it will stay free but I'm also with the guys at CVG when they say it might start to cost down the line. And sure, cod games have online for free, but I can't imagine any cod server would need as powerful servers as the GTA Online will need. Cod is fairly simple like that. From what I can understand, the information that is being transferred on a cod server isn't nearly as big as whats being transferred on GTA Online. On COD you've got player movement on a little confined very predictable world, you've got to keep track of people shooting, peoples stats, and stuff blowing up, and voice chatter. On GTA Online you've got a map that is bigger than any COD maps. There is so much more for the server to transfer between the players. First there is the seamless matchmaking, where players are all put into the world. Theres only 16 players a world, so as you can imagine, there will be several different "worlds". Gotta send info on who's where, who's bought what, who's using what, who's being chased by what, and then there's the shooting, voice chatter and stats etc like you find in any other Cod game. Now, I'm no expert when it comes to servers. This could not be the way things work at all, but what I do know for sure, is that one huge difference that leads me to think they might charge you money somewhere in the future is this: Play a online match in a "old" cod game. I betcha the oldest games don't have servers up anymore. World of War, Modern Warfare, and evne modern warfare 2 have people hacking them all the time because they're not being monitored anymore. All of this tells me they haven't got the economy to keep these servers going like they did at game launch. The reason why I'm so sure things will be different in GTA Online, is that GTA Online starts here, and its only going to expand from here and get bigger and bigger over the years. It is not at its peak when the game launches, it's only going to get more content continousely. As Rockstar's President Leslie Benzies said:
i wasnt trying to compare it to cod i was mean it as that you buy the game and it comes with single player and MP for free which will be the same for GTA V. also cod 4 and world at war servers are still up
They are indeed, but they have had so many budget cuts. I don't think the Cod servers will be up in 5 years. The plan is for the GTA Online servers to be filled with much more content, and many more places to go to in 10. It's a standalone product, they will need people to pay for it one wayor another.
aand its launched! Looks epic, at first driving was a pain, im getting used to it now. 1,6% completed, woot woot edit: 5%, no cheat codes so far (_( edit #2: 32%
