Most of the attention on Rockstar post-GTA 6’s second delay has, rightly, been focused on their abrupt firing of 31 employees, for which the IWGB have accused the company of union busting.
As all of that happens, though, the video game making machine continues to churn on, and GTA Online’s continuing to get the additions Take-Two said it would when they set this latest delay in stone. GTA 5’s online element/cash cow guise has long been a playground where regular people like you or me can live out a still somewhat satire-tinged take on the fantasy lifestyles of uber-rich criminals, so it honestly feels a bit strange that it’s taken this long for Rockstar to add in mansions.
As outlined in the latest Rockstar Newswire post, those big houses are coming in an update this December. At this point, I’d ask that you briefly return your eyes to this article’s strapline. There are almost certainly a few suitable living or at least sleeping places a GTA Online character can own at this point that I’ve left out of that list.
The game’s economy, its prices for new additions hyperinflated to compensate for years of heist and business grinding from more dedicated players and the truckloads of real money spent by others, has long been an almost accidentally perfect parody of the real world.
Now, after years of living in cookie-cutter batchelor pads or tacky penthouses, its biggest whales are set to make the next step you would in real life. Buying a massive house to fill with monuments to your own glory, so you can live in the sort of cartoony decadence historically reserved for monarchs, major religious figures, robber barons, and investment bankers. No one in GTA Online needs a mansion. I’m fairly sure many who buy them will soon abandon setting foot in them, in favour of sleeping under the desk at a business or just not pretending to sleep at all. I remain unsure if this is just human nature or mastefully purposeful satire GTA Online players will play into.
If you jump into GTA Online this month, you can do three new missions for the folks who’ll be selling the mansions. These new missions, dubbed “New Listings”, involve clearing out squatters, finding construction materials, and motivating contractors. Doing all three will net you a discount of $2 million on your mansion. To put that in context, the least swanky yacht the game has to offer will cost you $6 million. Some business warehouses go for more than $3 million. There’s no indication of how much the mansions will cost yet, but I’m quite keen to find out, because I think I’ll end up rolling on the floor laughing.
