White knuckles, clenched jaw, frown lines buried deeper than my hatred for these purple bastard aliens. A baseball bat in hand and I'm going to town on the enemy like a battered pinata. GTA Online in 2020 was… something. And I'm repping green morph suits 'til I die.
In the throes of the harshest quarantine restrictions enforced overnight at the height of the global pandemic almost five years ago, the rules in our favorite virtual spaces remained the same throughout. Fighting faceless players on-screen while wrestling with boredom away from it helped to maintain the status quo.
GTA Online was no different. Until the dawn of the green and purple alien war – an inadvertent, player-made movement that ultimately led to a perceivable shift in policy for Rockstar and the company's player-facing narrative.
Fast forward a few years, and the long-demanded repairs to the beleaguered GTA Trilogy Definitive Edition mark the latest phase of this evolution. Rockstar didn't need to fix the Grove Street Games-led offering three years following its turbulent launch, but with GTA 6 now peeking its head just above the trenches, doing so has been a masterstroke in maintaining positive community sentiment.
GG-TA
The 26-year evolution of the GTA logo – from the original Grand Theft Auto to GTA 6
As a long-standing GTA Online player with well over 2,000 hours clocked, I reckon the alien gang war of 2020 is up there with my favorite moments roving the blood-spattered streets of Los Santos.
What started out as a modest off-the-cuff contingent of bothersome players wearing the Green Martian Bodysuit cosmetic item, equipped with Louisville sluggers on a whim, ultimately exploded into a mass-server conflict between millions of players that quickly consumed pockets of Instagram and TikTok.
A competing Purple Martian Bodysuit-sporting faction was born to police the greens, and for a while it became impossible to find a server not in on the action. God forbid you stumbled into the wrong place at the wrong time wearing the wrong colors. Or, even worse, found yourself face-to-face with either side wearing no colors at all. The city had no room for cowards.
In the same way hype for baking sourdough bread and hoarding toilet paper mid-pandemic eventually fell by the wayside, though, the inadvertent GTA Online alien war fizzled out in due course, with Rockstar refocusing the game's players on its official release slate thereafter.
At the end of 2020, Rockstar dropped the Cayo Perico update, and rounded out the following year with two major hits: the Dr Dre-starring Contract update for GTA Online, and the aforementioned GTA Trilogy Definitive Edition – one of which was revered, the other of which was ridiculed for its broken state on arrival.
As it strived to address the litany of complaints levied at the modern day reimaginings of OG Liberty City, Vice and San Andreas with a flurry of patches and fixes, seeing the otherwise flawless Rockstar with egg on its face was a jarring break from the norm.
Towards the end of 2022, Rockstar moved to formalize the green and purple alien war idea with its own eCola vs Sprunk community contest – a three week-long event that asked players to side with their favored in-game soft drink by joining crews, donning branded bodysuits, and downing virtual soda – each emptied can of which counted as a vote for the player's favored label.
The community-driven initiative was a success, but was quickly overshadowed by the catastrophic GTA 6 mega leak just a few weeks later, wherein over 90 screens and videos of in-development footage were made public, in turn putting Rockstar on the back foot like never before.
A regretful public acknowledgment followed, as did legal proceedings and sentencing for the culprit. Leak culture is definitely a far more ferocious beast today than it was pre-2013 when GTA 5 hit store shelves – something underscored by the fact that the first (and, at the time of writing, only) GTA 6 trailer was leaked in full 15 hours before its proposed premiere in December of last year.
Community serviced
The lingering bad faith tied to the Definitive Edition has all but evaporated, it would appear...
For me, it's no coincidence that Rockstar has since doubled down on its community initiatives in the run-up to Grand Theft Auto 6 in the looming shadow of relative vulnerability.
Sure, this is a multi-billion dollar company that's likely too big to fail by any tangible measure at this juncture – from the outside looking in, at least. But the flip side of being so vast and profitable is that, of course, it's also an organisation judged by its shareholders on generating as much cash as it possibly can at any given turn. As it stares down the biggest project in its 25+ year history – one that's over a decade in the making, that comes into sharp focus following a turbulent stretch behind the scenes – and it's probably fair to say Rockstar needs public sentiment to be equally as a favorable as parent company Take Two's revenue projections for the next fiscal year.
The string of Heist Challenges that have seen players combine to smash pre-set targets over the last 24 months are one facet of this. The North Yankton Nightmare zombie-killing event is another; as are last year's Doomsday Scenario Challenge (within which players smashed the $100 billion in-game goal five times over), and this year's Pizza Delivery Community Challenge.
Acquiring the popular fan-made multiplayer client FiveM last year speaks to the future of what could be in the community space – a purchase that'll likely show its true worth whenever GTA 6 lands on PC – and, going full circle, fixing the GTA Trilogy Definitive Edition feels like the final cog in the machine that kick starts the next stretch of Rockstar's legacy.
Rockstar didn't need to fix the GTA Trilogy Definitive Edition, but if you've spent any time on social media since the developers rolled out the latest game-saving patch, you'll have spied the nostalgic, generation-spanning love-in that's been perpetuated by older fans finally getting what they wanted in 2021, and a younger contingent who're finally positioned to give the old dogs the respect they deserve.
The lingering bad faith tied to the Definitive Edition has all but evaporated, it would appear, with Rockstar the white knight to Grove Street Games' pantomime villain. From a business and perception perspective, it's such a shrewd move as we approach the new year, and, of course, the final stretch before our return to Vice City.
All of this before the Grand Theft Auto VI Trailer 1's first birthday, on Wednesday, December 4. With well over 220 million views on YouTube, and well over 900,000 comments, hype for Trailer 2 is as high as it's ever been. And while a working GTA Trilogy Definitive Edition pales in insignificance to the inevitable incoming tidal wave of positive sentiment, it has cleansed a wound and untangled a complicated situation, while clearing the path to excitement.
Love is a Long Road, so croons the late Tom Petty in Trailer 1. With the Definitive Edition's long and winding road now complete, and with GTA 6's promised 2025 window hurtling towards us at a rate of knots, the end of that journey is now just about in sight. And Rockstar has played a blinder getting as many people on-side for the finale.
Yes I know you can't wait for GTA 6, but I'm still waiting for Rockstar to bring us Bully 2
