Rockstar Games to Turn Grand Theft Auto Into a Metaverse

Rockstar Games is exploring turning its bestselling Grand Theft Auto franchise into a metaverse platform with the upcoming GTA 6, paving the way for user-generated content (UGC) creators to develop the video game.

Why It Hits: Fortnite, Roblox, and Minecraft are some of the biggest names in gaming today, thanks to their ability to be endlessly built on by players. But there’s nothing really comparable to those titles strictly in the adult-oriented space, which GTA could easily conquer.

Between the Levels: There are a lot of aspects of GTA that are customizable… but Rockstar now wants to make the game itself customizable, too.

• Rockstar is talking with Roblox and Fortnite creators about building “custom experiences inside the upcoming game,” according to Digiday.
• It’s also talking with creators in the “GTA RP [role play]” community — players who use the FiveM game-modification platform to run huge multiplayer worlds within GTA.
• Per inside sources, these custom experiences would allow creators to “modify the game’s environment and assets to bring their own intellectual property” into the new game.
• It’s rumored that brands could also play a bigger role in these custom experiences — a significant change for the GTA world that regularly creates satirical knockoff versions of companies.

Final Boss: It’s uncertain exactly how creators would make money on the platform — it could be the sale of virtual items (plenty of opportunities there), revenue share programs, or even the subscription fees that creators on FiveM already charge (which have been a major moneymaker for some). No matter what, though, there will be a huge audience for the metaverse extension — it’s already the most-watched game on Twitch. 

With GTA 6 rumored to cost $2 billion (making it the most expensive game ever), Rockstar is likely looking for any possible way to recoup the budget and make money for years to come.