GTA+ Is Just A Subscription To Feel Like A Poor Person In A Fake City
Rockstar Games, the company that has perfected the art of making you wait a decade for a game and then charging you $70 for the privilege of playing it on a console that costs more than your first car, has decided that Grand Theft Auto Online wasn’t already enough of a second job. Enter GTA+, a subscription service that launched in 2022 and has somehow managed to become the most aggressively mid-tier thing to happen to video games since the Xbox One’s “TV, TV, TV” era. If you’re a normal person who just wants to rob some convenience stores and maybe run over a pedestrian or two, you probably looked at GTA+ and thought, “Wait, I have to pay a monthly fee for this?” Congratulations, you’re already smarter than the marketing team at Take-Two Interactive.
Let’s break this down for the uninitiated, because I know some of you are still playing on a PS4 that sounds like a jet engine and haven’t touched GTA Online since 2017. GTA+ is a $5.99 monthly subscription for Grand Theft Auto Online. That’s right, a subscription. For a game that came out in 2013. A game that already makes Rockstar more money than the entire GDP of a small island nation through shark cards. But apparently, the executives looked at their Scrooge McDuck money pools and thought, “You know what’s missing? A recurring revenue stream that makes people feel like they’re paying for the privilege of not having to grind for 40 hours to buy a car that doesn’t even have a cup holder.”
What do you actually get for your six bucks? Let’s start with the “free” car every month. Oh, cool, a free vehicle. Except it’s usually something like a 2013 Prius with a spoiler glued on, and you have to log in during a specific window to claim it, or else you get nothing. It’s like a loot box, but with more FOMO and less dopamine. Then there’s the shark card bonus—because nothing says “premium experience” like getting an extra 15% on a virtual currency that you’re already overpaying for. You also get access to “exclusive” properties, which are just the same apartments you’ve been ignoring since 2015, but now they have a slightly different rug pattern.
The real kicker? The “exclusive” clothing and vehicle upgrades. Oh boy, I can finally wear a t-shirt that says “I Paid $6 For This” in a game where I already own 47 different pairs of neon sneakers. The vehicle upgrades are just paint jobs that make your car look like a rejected Hot Wheels design. It’s the video game equivalent of buying a “VIP” ticket to a concert and finding out it just means you get to stand in a slightly less crowded section of the same porta-potty line.
But the absolute peak of GTA+’s absurdity is the “career progress” bonuses. Yes, you read that right. You can pay Rockstar money to skip the grinding in a game that is literally about grinding. GTA Online is already a game where you spend 80% of your time driving to a mission, 15% of your time waiting for a loading screen, and 5% of your time actually having fun. And now, for the low, low price of a Chipotle burrito every month, you can skip the part where you pretend to enjoy the game and just get the rewards. It’s like paying someone to watch a movie for you and then tell you the ending. Why are you even playing?
Let’s talk about the community response, because that’s where the real gold is. The official GTA subreddit, which is a lawless wasteland of modded accounts and people asking “Is this game still worth playing?” for the 8,000th time, had a meltdown when GTA+ was announced. Posts like “I’ve bought GTA V three times and now they want a subscription?” and “Rockstar is dead to me” flooded the feed, only to be followed by the same people a month later asking, “Does GTA+ give you the new car yet?” The cognitive dissonance is real. It’s the same energy as people who complain about microtransactions in FIFA while opening packs with their rent money.
And let’s not ignore the timing. GTA+ launched in March 2022, which was right around the time everyone realized GTA VI wasn’t coming out until 2025 at the earliest. Rockstar basically said, “Hey, you’re going to be waiting another three years for a new game, so here, pay us six dollars a month to keep pretending you care about this one.” It’s the video game equivalent of a toxic ex sending you a Venmo request for “emotional support” while they ghost you for a decade.
The real question is: who is buying this? The answer is the same people who buy NFT jpegs of monkeys and think that “The Bachelor” is a valid career path. GTA+ is designed for the whales—the people who have already spent $500 on shark cards and think $6 a month is a bargain to avoid the horror of actually playing the game. It’s a service for people who have more money than sense, and Rockstar is banking on the sunk cost fallacy to keep them subscribed. You’ve already invested 2,000 hours in GTA Online? Well, you wouldn’t want to miss out on that free t-shirt that says “LS Customs” on it, would you?
But here’s the thing: GTA+ isn’t even a bad deal compared to other subscriptions. PlayStation Plus is $10 a month and gives you access to a library of games you’ll never play. Xbox Game Pass is $10 a month and is actually a good value if you ignore the day-one releases that are all broken. GTA+ is $6 a month for a single game that you probably already own. It’s like paying for a parking spot in a
Final Thoughts
Having parsed the fine print of Rockstar’s subscription model, my conclusion is that GTA+ is less a revolution in gaming and more a masterclass in monetizing FOMO. It offers a tidy bundle of cosmetic skins and in-game cash for *GTA Online* veterans, but for the price of a monthly indie game, you’re essentially renting convenience in a decade-old title rather than buying any real, lasting value. Ultimately, it feels like a cleverly designed loyalty tax for those who refuse to log off Los Santos, rather than a compelling reason for anyone else to subscribe.