GTA Online just made collecting cash from your businesses much, much easier, but only if you subscribe to GTA+. Putting a paywall on a basic quality-of-life feature is not going down well with players, who fear that we're seeing some very bad precedents for monetization in GTA 6.
With the launch of this week's GTA Online Bottom Dollar Bounties update, GTA+ members now have access to the new Vinewood Club app on their in-game phones. As Rockstar explains on the official site, this app "lets you easily request vehicles, claim all outstanding business safe earnings, and replenish ammo on your in-game phone."
The ability to claim business earnings without having to run around to the physical location of all those businesses is something players have wanted for ages, and seeing it locked behind the GTA+ paywall is giving the community a fair bit of consternation. You can go trawl Reddit for yourself if you want to see comments from annoyed players, but the general sentiment is that this feature should be available to everyone by default.
But it's comments like "GTA 6 gonna be shitshow with gta+" that are really telling about the community's sentiments. The response to GTA Online's increasingly aggressive monetization has been predictably - yet understandably - negative, and it's tough to imagine a world where Rockstar pulls back from these extra revenue streams in the follow-up. After all, they certainly haven't prevented GTA Online from continuing to be absurdly popular even now, over a decade after its launch.
Rockstar has not yet officially confirmed whether GTA 6 will have an online component, but given GTA Online's role in making GTA 5 one of the best-selling games of all time, it'd be downright shocking if there's no follow-up. Here's hoping that whatever form GTA Online takes in the future, it'll come with a monetization approach that's at least a little less alienating to players.
