First releasing in 2013, Grand Theft Auto Online has become hugely popular within the GTA fandom. The game still receives regular updates, with future content already planned. However, despite being on almost all modern consoles, GTA Online doesn’t support cross-play. Although Rockstar Games has never officially given a reason, there’s most likely a good explanation for why cross-play features don’t exist in GTA Online.

Currently, GTA Online is available for PC, PS3, Xbox 360, PS4, and Xbox One. The game is planned for next-gen consoles like the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 as well, alongside exclusive new content. However, cross-play isn’t supported between any platforms at this time, and it probably won’t happen anytime soon – if ever.

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It’s unclear why Rockstar Games didn’t initially support cross-play for GTA Online. In 2013, when the game first released, cross-play features were far less common, but not completely unheard of. Since then, Rockstar Games has developed a reputation for not supporting cross-play. Most recently, Red Dead Online didn’t support cross-play even though it was rumored to – and fans were asking for it. Now, it seems unlikely either Red Dead Online or GTA Online will ever get cross-play.

The Reason GTA Online Will Probably Never Have Cross-Play

In the time since its release, there have been countless mods implemented into GTA Online for PC. These mods range from the simple to the insane, but they mostly serve to make the experience more enjoyable. However, because of this, it would be hard to support cross-play between PC and other platforms. There would have to be modded and vanilla servers, and it’s unclear if alterations made to the PC version would even be available to console players. Seven years in with GTA Online, and cross-play is probably just too big of a headache for Rockstar Games to try now.

GTA Online has been successful for Rockstar Games, so the lack of cross-play doesn’t appear to have hurt its popularity. From a business standpoint, it just doesn’t make sense to invest time and money balancing the game for cross-play across all GTA Online‘s platforms when the game is  incredibly successful already even without such a feature. Even though a lot of fans would like to see cross-play supported, it’s probably just not worth the time and effort for Rockstar, at least for now.

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Both Red Dead Online and GTA Online receive regular updates, so a cross-play feature may be incorporated into the games one day. For now, however, that seems somewhat unlikely. It’s worth noting that Rockstar Games has been relatively quiet on what it has in store for Grand Theft Auto Onlineon next-gen consoles, so cross-play between PS5 and Xbox Series X could still be a possibility in the future.

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Austin King
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Austin King is a Game Features Editor at Screen Rant. He’s the author of several books and hosts the Dragon Quest FM and JRPGs & Me podcasts. You can find him on Twitter @DragonQuaustin.

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