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/iWith GTA 6 finally on track for a late 2026 release, the most anticipated game of the year is shaping up to be an even bigger phenomenon than anyone had imagined, and not just at launch. The evidence for that is hiding in plain sight, in the remarkable staying power of a game that came out thirteen years ago.
Is GTA 6 set to follow in its predecessor’s footsteps?
Who could have predicted that GTA 5 would still be pulling in massive numbers in 2026? While its successor gears up for launch, Rockstar’s 2013 masterpiece remains a genuine cultural fixture. And it has one thing to thank for that above all else: GTA Online, which has long since evolved into a standalone phenomenon in its own right, and one that players are already eager to see reimagined for GTA 6.
GTA Online launched in 2014, and has been in a constant state of evolution ever since. One of the most transformative developments came with the integration of PC mods, and specifically the rise of the FiveM framework. Rockstar clearly recognized what it had on its hands, the studio eventually acquired FiveM outright, and the service is all but certain to carry over into GTA 6’s online offering.
Another phenomenon?
That’s precisely why the next Grand Theft Auto Online could be something on a completely different scale. Yes, millions of players worldwide will dive straight into the single-player experience. But a huge portion of the audience is waiting for the multiplayer, and more specifically, for everything they loved about GTA 5 to return in a bigger, better form. FiveM’s numbers make that appetite impossible to ignore.
Since Rockstar’s acquisition, the studio has taken control of how and where FiveM is accessible. It was made compatible with PC Game Pass, and then, in early 2026, it arrived on Steam. That’s where things get truly telling. Thanks to Valve’s publicly available player data, we can see that FiveM’s modding framework is drawing staggering numbers on GTA 5 Online, as recently as March 15th, it peaked at nearly 203,000 simultaneous users. Now imagine what those figures look like when GTA 6 enters the picture. We may be about to witness something the gaming world has never seen before.
Source: SteamDb.
