GTA Online Thread (Useful Links in OP)

  • Thread starter dhandeh
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Well there's a surprise, R* are more concerned about selling Shark Cards and raking in the money than they are about the game they're selling - even when (or perhaps exactly because) that game is the most successful entertainment media of all time and basically sells itself.

It's almost as if they don't really care about the players, isn't it?

It's true that the inflation problem is an easy fix in theory. It's called tunables permanently discounting certain items. Given R*s form and what we all know about the AAA industry in general, however, do we really think there's a hope in hell of them doing something about it? Unless it, somehow, gets banned globally, of course? Greed leads to more greed, snowball effect and so on.

That GTA Online is horribly unbalanced in basically every single way (no, really, name me one aspect of GTA Online that's properly balanced. Just one.) shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. On the other hand, as alluded to, as long as it's not illegal, why stop doing it? Or, in the case of EA, even if it *is* illegal, why admit defeat?

The sad fact is that - and this counts for basically the entire AAA sphere - we as players can hope, ask and pray all we want. As long as the CEOs and shareholders have enough money to engage in their daily routine of boats, hoes and crack cocaine, they have no reason to listen. Now *that*, 2K Games, is an unfortunate reality of modern gaming. *Ba dum tss*.

You make it sound like games are developed by a guy in a shed and the only running costs are electricity and energy drinks.

The reality is that Rockstar employs over a thousand people and they need to continuously earn money to cover for that.

As for inflation, that’s just a natural part of an evolving game economy. With each new update the rewards should increase slightly to keep players motivated to invest in new businesses / bunkers / whatever, but then the price of items also needs to go up because otherwise you’d soon end up in a situation where money becomes irrelevant and then your economy has crashed.
 
The reality is that Rockstar employs over a thousand people and they need to continuously earn money to cover for that.

I'm not saying R* isn't a big company.
I'm not saying R* doesn't employ an army of people.
And I'm not saying they don't have bills to pay.

What I *am* saying is that they've made $6 billion over the course of about 5 years, which averages out to $1.2 billion per year.

Now, think about it for a second - the federal minimum wage in the U.S. (inb4 "but R* North aren't based in the U.S." - I know that. This is called an experiment) is $7.25 an hour. Assuming an average work week is 40 hours and there is no such thing as unpaid weeks, that's enough to pay 400.000 employees their annual salary. For comparison, with inflation, GTA V cost $278 million to develop - equivalent to about 18.500 employees paid at all times.

Please explain to me when they hired an additional 382.500 employees, so that their operating budget is now $1.2 million per year.

And no, I'm not saying they shouldn't be making any money at all. I'm just saying, when they're pulling these kind of numbers, the story kind of tells itself. Or is the next argument going to be how EA is such a financially insecure startup that they need their lootboxes to stay in business, in which case - should they even *be* in business? (And yes, I kind of nicked that one from mr. Sterling)

As for inflation, that’s just a natural part of an evolving game economy. With each new update the rewards should increase slightly to keep players motivated to invest in new businesses / bunkers / whatever, but then the price of items also needs to go up because otherwise you’d soon end up in a situation where money becomes irrelevant and then your economy has crashed.

To a certain extent, I would agree. But it's all about finding that sweet spot.

A couple more numbers for you: at the launch of Online, Contact Missions was the grind. I've made calculations elsewhere that say you'd be making about $1,500 per minute doing Contact Missions, so let's assume for a moment that not a whole lot has changed there, in which case that's just over an hour for a regular Comet. That's fairly doable, I'd say.
Nowadays, a reasonable (and maintainable) grind routine can get you what, $7,000 per minute or thereabouts, as a combination of I/E, Bunker and Headhunter? Now, do we have a recent vehicle comparable to the Comet? Oh, yeah, the Comet SR, which I even recall you being displeased about in a not-worth-the-price fashion at the start of this very year. In which case, combining the above grinding routine with the desire to purchase an SR, that's nearly three hours.

The point I'm trying to make here is that yes, there are many more ways of making money nowadays - and some of them work really well - but in real terms, the balance hasn't shifted - and if it has, it's supercharged itself in the wrong direction.
And all that's before we get too involved in the whole is-it-a-game-or-is-it-a-job thing. Or the does-the-game-actually-need-an-economy debate.
 
I'm not saying R* isn't a big company.
I'm not saying R* doesn't employ an army of people.
And I'm not saying they don't have bills to pay.

What I *am* saying is that they've made $6 billion over the course of about 5 years, which averages out to $1.2 billion per year.

Now, think about it for a second - the federal minimum wage in the U.S. (inb4 "but R* North aren't based in the U.S." - I know that. This is called an experiment) is $7.25 an hour. Assuming an average work week is 40 hours and there is no such thing as unpaid weeks, that's enough to pay 400.000 employees their annual salary. For comparison, with inflation, GTA V cost $278 million to develop - equivalent to about 18.500 employees paid at all times.

You can't pay a software engineer minimum wage. They're not code monkeys.

dilbert-software-simian-500x155.gif


Let's look at the income statement for the parent company Take Two Interactive for the past four years:

https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/ttwo/financials?query=income-statement

Revenues are indeed high, between 1 to 1.8 billions annually. However, cost of revenue is also high, between 0.8 and 1 billion.

On top of that we have operating expenses. ranging between 0.5 and 0.8 billion dollars, making the operating income between -0.26 billions and 0.14 billions, and the average operating income over the past four years is actually negative: $ -10,000,000.

At the bottom you see the net income for each of the four years:

2014/2015: $ -279,470,000
2015/2016: $ -8,302,000
2016/2017: $ 67,303,000
2017/2018: $ 173,533,000

Average net income: $ -11,000,000.

Please explain to me when they hired an additional 382.500 employees, so that their operating budget is now $1.2 million per year.

The operating cost (operating expenses + cost of revenue) of Take Two Interactive for 2017/2018 was $1.6 billion, not including taxes.
As of March 31, 2018, they had 4,492 full-time employees, so you don't really need 380,000 employees to reach that kind of figures.
 
They should bolster Online without worrying one iota about how much money they’re going to make this week...or the next week...and so on...and so forth.

Unfortunately, GTA's publisher, Take Two interactive is a publicly traded company, meaning they are going to be seeking to maximize profits for their investors/shareholders. If you look at Take Two's market performance since GTA V was released, I would say they are performing exceptionally. (Pulled from the internet just now)

QkLGcsY.jpg


That's an 800% ROI from the date of GTA V's release. Tesla's stock, for reference, hasn't even doubled in the same time frame.

This goes back to the age old question of WHY. Further listening:



I get the impression that Take Two is the one really pressing the maximization of profits. Rockstar's creative team would probably prefer making the game itself better (or moving on to something else).

Further reading: Car Guys vs Bean Counters

At the end of the day, corporatism, masquerading as capitalism, ruins everything. Even video games.
 
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I know I'm way late to the party but the Serrano, FQ2, BeeJay XL, and Habanero are available for now sale. The dripfeed may be going quicker than we anticipated. I'm expecting two cars next week.
 
Why are they selling these cars? They are so easy to steal. :confused:
Easy excuse to keep the dripfeed going and make you wait another week til' the livery updates are added (I think those are the only things people really want).

People have said the cars did get updated though, that they carry a bit more detail than they did at launch and one of the cars has new mods. Then there's a couple others who think this is the end of GTA Online despite the sound logic that Rockstar likely isn't going to release anything worthwhile until well after RDR2's launch.
 
Was tired of waiting for it to go on sale so I finally shelled out the 900k+ for the Savestra. I really like it! The customization is really good, it sounds like a rotary, and it goes like hell modified properly. Probably my favorite car at the moment.
 
I know I'm way late to the party but the Serrano, FQ2, BeeJay XL, and Habanero are available for now sale. The dripfeed may be going quicker than we anticipated. I'm expecting two cars next week.

Why are they selling these cars? They are so easy to steal. :confused:

I read somewhere that the models had been tweaked and there was new mods for some of these cars but I haven't been online or seen screenshots.
 
There be new bonuses, but no "new" cars. There are, however, interesting car-related discoveries a la the un-brokened Jester Classic coming in a moment, but before that, 25% boost on Nightclub Warehouse production, so if you want, now's the time to fill that warehouse, 30 or 40% off basically all businesses that aren't the Nightclub, 25% speed boost on Biker Businesses, a neutered Running Back adversary mode, and the Scramjet sets a new record for Time Taken For A Car To Become Irrelevant And Get Discounted, weighing in at just 4 weeks.

Now, as for the bit that's actually interesting and somewhat related to how the Jester Classic was fixed, I've only just noticed that not only has R* fixed the headlights on the Flash GT - which would've been a simple fix, I'd imagine - and will have to have been with one of the two updates this time as it was only released with SSASSS - but it seems one of these updates (ironically SSASSS) have also fixed the Retinue's wheel size issue, in case you stuck it in the back of your garage and forgot about it. So that's a good thing. And a good enough reason to bring it back out.
 
Unfortunately, GTA's publisher, Take Two interactive is a publicly traded company, meaning they are going to be seeking to maximize profits for their investors/shareholders. If you look at Take Two's market performance since GTA V was released, I would say they are performing exceptionally. (Pulled from the internet just now)

QkLGcsY.jpg


That's an 800% ROI from the date of GTA V's release. Tesla's stock, for reference, hasn't even doubled in the same time frame.

This goes back to the age old question of WHY. Further listening:



I get the impression that Take Two is the one really pressing the maximization of profits. Rockstar's creative team would probably prefer making the game itself better (or moving on to something else).

Further reading: Car Guys vs Bean Counters

At the end of the day, corporatism, masquerading as capitalism, ruins everything. Even video games.


Are they maximizing profit for their shareholders though?

Here is a brief history of Take Two Interactive:

Net income vs. Fiscal Year.png
Employees vs. Fiscal Year.png


Looks like they're expanding, rather than maximizing profit.

And it's not actually corporatism, it's capitalism. And I can't see how it ruins video games. Remove capitalism and you won't have shark cards, sure, but you would also not have a GTA V / Online, because no small independent studio have the manpower or a quarter of a billion dollars to spend on development.
 
Quick stupid question: for the nightclubs you only need to own the associated business for the tech to be able to accrue goods right? Like for sporting goods/gunrunning do I only need to own a bunker or do I need the upgrades too?
 
Quick stupid question: for the nightclubs you only need to own the associated business for the tech to be able to accrue goods right? Like for sporting goods/gunrunning do I only need to own a bunker or do I need the upgrades too?

Just the business. You do not need to purchase the specific upgrades for each type of business if you are only going to use them for the nightclub. If you are going to run the business itself in addition to the nightclub accruement; then you will want to purchase the upgrades from the laptop at the business itself.
 
Just the business. You do not need to purchase the specific upgrades for each type of business if you are only going to use them for the nightclub. If you are going to run the business itself in addition to the nightclub accruement; then you will want to purchase the upgrades from the laptop at the business itself.

Ah, ok. Thanks for the clarification.
 
I'm not on as much as I used to be but so far the Nightclub has earned about 8 million so far. Paid for itself and paid for a few MC businesses.

Not too bad for a passive income.
 
I’ve made just under $2M from the nightclub. Just using my cargowarehouse and cokebusiness. And the additional things from business battles.
So today I bought the remaining 4 businessesesses, all technicians and storages for the nightclub. I think it cost me ~2,8-3M in total. Not bad
 
I looked last night out of curiosity and I have made over $23M from the nightclub. The big number on the home screen included both the nightclub take as well as the basement warehouse earnings. IIRC I had made 20M+ from the warehouse and 2M+ from the club till.
 
One thing I think rockstar really shanked on a fundamental level is the 'hood' camera view. It's awful. And because the cockpit view is also terrible, I'm almost always using the third person view. Really wish they had a proper hood cam like this:



Also, the dashboard camera like in the newer Forza games would be pretty good for GTA I think.

 
Thoroughly bored of GTA Online. Only played about an hour in the last 2 weeks...sight seer while listening to the radio is about the only thing left I enjoy. Haven't flown my savage in probably 4 months. Starting to feel like the twilight era of GTAV-O...
 
..I want to say there's an easy solution to that, which would be to get some events up and running, but, even in the wonderful lands of PS4, that hasn't really worked for quite some time.

..maybe GTA *is* starting to die off.
 
Thoroughly bored of GTA Online. Only played about an hour in the last 2 weeks...sight seer while listening to the radio is about the only thing left I enjoy. Haven't flown my savage in probably 4 months. Starting to feel like the twilight era of GTAV-O...

I've been finding it so hard to play, because any money I do get usually goes to a business, which then feels like a day-to-day real life job routine with constant 'do X, then X, then you can enjoy yourself'.
 
The last update has been a good little money maker, though. Double payouts on all Terrorbyte Client jobs rakes in 60,000cr and you can VIP work whilst the cooldown interface counts down. I made an easy million plus tonight in just a few hours. I think the bunker supply was sped up 25% as well, but I remained focused on the client jobs.
 
There are just fewer players in my circle of friends that still play. That, for me, is the single greatest factor limiting how much I play. I have more money than ever, and fewer things to spend it on than ever. Not a concern. There just aren't enough activities to keep folks entertained, and the same old stuff is now stale. Someone brought up doing another tour and show the other night as a way to generate some more enthusiasm, to which I replied "For the three of us?" And that about sums it up.
 
It would be cool to put together at least one or two final gatherings before it fades into oblivion. Maybe something a little different from the traditional show/tour gig. One of the things I had always wanted to do was to have a single model show. An example would be the Tornado. It has dozens of different options for customization, easy to source and fairly inexpensive by today's standards. I have always enjoyed everyone's different designs on the same vehicle. If a tour is what would interest people, maybe bring back the BMX/skate park tour. That one was always fun, much more interactive than the sight seeing variety. Maybe even expand it to include a mountain bike segment up north. I would be on for something along these lines.
 
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