GTA 5 will leave Xbox Game Pass soon

GTA Online Independence Day 2021 — (Image credit: Rockstar Games)

GTA 5 is leaving Xbox Game Pass soon, marking the end of its second tour on Microsoft's subscription service for free games.

Neither Microsoft nor Rockstar have made an official announcement about when GTA 5 will leave Xbox Game Pass, but it now appears in the "Leaving soon" collection for Game Pass. All the games in that section will exit the Xbox Game Pass library within the next two weeks, so you can expect it to depart sometime in early August at the latest.

GTA 5 Premium Edition is currently discounted to $14.99 (it's normally $29.99) as part of the Xbox Summer Sale, so if you want to keep playing even after it leaves Game Pass, now would be a good time to pick it up. Your progress will be waiting for you the next time you're ready to play, whether you buy GTA 5 permanently or hold out to see if it comes to Game Pass a third time.

GTA 5's current time in the Game Pass sun began on April 8, meaning it will have stuck around for about 4 months before it rides its fancy new tuner car off into the Blaine County sunset. While it's offered as a single game, it actually comes with access to both the single-player exclusive story mode of GTA 5 and GTA Online, its sprawling multiplayer counterpart. An Xbox Series X (and PS5) native version of GTA 5 is set to arrive in November, which may be part of the reason Microsoft and Rockstar are quietly shuffling it out of Game Pass ahead of time - otherwise you'd get it for free too, thanks to Xbox Smart Delivery.