GTA Online drew 17.9 million players, GTA V and RDR2 stay strong
GTA Online drew 17.9 million players across Xbox, PlayStation and Steam, and that still leaves out Rockstar launcher and Epic users.
GTA 6 may be the headline Rockstar wants the world talking about, but the old guard is still pulling serious weight. New March and April data showed GTA Online and Red Dead Redemption 2 holding up as major hits, and the sharpest number in the pile was GTA Online’s 17.9 million players across Xbox, PlayStation and Steam. That total did not even include Rockstar Games Launcher or Epic Games Store users, which means the real audience was larger still.
That reach helps explain why Rockstar keeps treating GTA Online like a living product instead of a relic. Rockstar’s own site still describes it as a “dynamic and ever-evolving online universe for up to 30 players,” and on May 7 it announced another GTA Online update with new content and big changes. Nearly 13 years after launch, the game is still drawing enough traffic to justify fresh support, not just maintenance.
The business case is just as strong. Take-Two said in its fiscal 2025 results that the Grand Theft Auto series once again exceeded expectations, with GTA V sold-in at more than 215 million units worldwide. It also said recurrent consumer spending rose 5% year over year, led in part by GTA Online and GTA+ memberships. In its quarterly materials, Take-Two listed Grand Theft Auto Online and Grand Theft Auto V among the company’s biggest contributors to net revenue, keeping the franchise central to the publisher’s balance sheet.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is not fading into the background either. Take-Two said in fiscal 2025 materials that the game had sold-in more than 70 million units worldwide. In an earlier fiscal 2025 quarter, it put the figure above 67 million and said the game still ranked in the top ten for unit sales globally, according to GSD. That matters because it shows Rockstar’s older catalog is still producing the kind of engagement most publishers would build a strategy around, not around.
The timing also tells its own story. PlayStation’s top downloads posts showed Grand Theft Auto V in the March 2026 PS5 charts for US/Canada and Europe, then again in the April 2026 PS5 charts. Take-Two’s November 6, 2025 earnings release said Grand Theft Auto VI was scheduled for November 19, 2026. For Rockstar, that leaves a long runway where GTA Online and GTA V remain active, monetized and impossible to treat like sunset products.
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