On April 11, a hacker group called ShinyHunters issued an ultimatum to Rockstar Games, the makers of Grand Theft Auto 6. The group claimed to hold sensitive financial data, threatening that if Rockstar didn’t pay up, ShinyHunters would release the information publicly. A few days later, the group made good on its threat, publishing a rare behind‑the‑scenes look that helps fans contextualize the way Rockstar conducts business.
As one fan on the GTA Forums aptly put it, the situation could be boiled down to “Pay us or we will tell everyone how well your company is doing.”
Rockstar did not turn over any cash to the hacking group. In response, ShinyHunters published an announcement on the evening of April 13 that was teeming with mockery. “How does it feel to be the headline?” the group asked as they released the data they’d held for ransom. That information has largely turned out to be sales figures, and — shocker — those figures make Rockstar look good.
In a now-deleted post shared by X account vx-underground, the group broke down player spending in Grand Theft Auto Online by region and platform. According to these documents, U.S.-based PlayStation users spend the most, while PC users spend the least. Those revenue splits help explain why Sony is treating the release of GTA 6 as a de facto PS5 exclusive, and why the game will not get a release on Windows PC on day one.
During the pandemic holidays, Kotaku reports that Rockstar was making around $1 million a day just from GTA Online. Much of that revenue comes from 4% of the user base purchasing Shark Cards. Some have misread the numbers to mean that there’s a single GTA Online fan out there who has spent a million dollars on the game. While this isn’t the case, Rockstar still reportedly earns more in a single day from GTA Online than some games do in an entire year.
“I can see why there wasn’t a rush for the next game,” one GTA Forums user commented next to a GIF of a man diving into a swimming pool full of money.
This also rationalizes why Rockstar will not be winding down GTA Online once GTA 6 is out, and why the developer is putting so much emphasis on supporting user-generated content. The numbers further underline why, even after multiple delays, Rockstar is still keen on a fourth-quarter release for GTA 6.
The data also elucidates specifics about player spending in Red Dead Online, the multiplayer component of Red Dead Redemption 2. Apparently, the multiplayer Western has just under 1 million weekly active users — estimated to be one-ninth of GTA Online‘s weekly player base. Fans could have surmised the general scope of this discrepancy from the fact Rockstar has all but abandoned Red Dead Online, of course. Apparently, Red Dead Online only has around 15,000 paying customers on a weekly basis. “Any other studio would kill for those numbers for their online game,” one GTA Forums user writes.
It is easy to dismiss a lot of this information as unsurprising. But while much of the big picture painted by the breach is predictable, the specifics are no less absurd.
“Well we knew it was big,” one GTA Forums user opined, “but the half a billion yearly (13 years after release) is mad.”
And as another GTA fan reminds us, on their own, these big bucks might be deceiving. Said one forum user, “It’s recently came out that Fortnite doesn’t actually make that much profit because it’s so expensive to run, so I wonder what GTAO’s margins are.”
Rockstar Games plans to release Grand Theft Auto 6 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X on Nov. 19. Hopefully, that release date holds, as Rockstar said in a statement that its recent hack “has no impact on our organization or our players.”
GTA 6: Everything we know about Rockstar’s next game
Rockstar’s long-awaited follow-up to GTA 5 is finally coming
About the Author
