For over a week now, since the 7th, there have been news about January offers in Red Dead Online, yet no messages, publications, or posts from the developers have appeared on social media, even though there have been changes to the weekly bonuses in GTA Online and the monthly benefits for GTA+ subscribers. Some have linked this silence to a potential announcement related to GTA 6 or the next-gen version of GTA 5. This could be close to the truth (we’ll talk about this a bit later), but something would have been disclosed by now if that were the case. The actual reason is likely something else.
Last Tuesday, massive wildfires began in Los Angeles, burning over 16,000 hectares (an area larger than Paris), destroying thousands of structures, and continuing to this day. For a better understanding of the scale, the areas affected by the fire have been overlaid onto a GTA 5 map.
There have even been online rumors that the real-life prototypes of Michael’s house and Grove Street were destroyed. In fact, that’s not true. The first case is circulating last year’s photo of a house in San Francisco that was not used to create the De Santa mansion. In the second case, it’s even simpler — the images of the burnt-out area have nothing to do with the famous cul-de-sac. There are countless such areas across the country, and the one that inspired the developers is located in the southern part of the city.
So what about Rockstar Games, whose office, incidentally, is in LA? There is speculation that the media silence occurred because the bonus week that ended was primarily related to the sale of the Vapid Firebolt ASP pickup truck. Usually, new vehicles are promoted aggressively, but this time they likely deemed it inappropriate due to the model’s name, which translates to “flare” or “firebolt.” Unlike some fan accounts, which suggested ending “Online” by setting a fire on the map that would destroy everything. Of course, it would be cool to create an unusual finale for the multiplayer game. For example, the creators of one game staged a meteor shower to depict the end of a virtual world. But they did nothing of the sort with the original version of GTA Online for PS3 and Xbox 360, simply turning off the servers. It’s too early to discuss this, and proposing such an approach right now would be entirely inappropriate.
We expect that today, in a few hours, selected fan resources will receive details of the week starting on Thursday, as is customary, and tomorrow the “rock stars” themselves will break their silence.
Source: gta.com.ua