worried rockstar will abandon gta 6 online like they did red dead online

I keep coming back to this worry. GTA Online prints money for Rockstar. Like an absurd amount. And a huge chunk of that is kids dropping cash on Shark Cards without thinking twice. GTA 5 has been out for over a decade now, the player base is massive and those spending habits are baked in.

So what happens when GTA 6 Online launches? If it doesn't immediately out-earn GTA 5 Online, do they just... leave it? That's what scares me. Red Dead Online had a ton of potential. I remember thinking they'd build it into their next big cash cow. Instead they basically stopped supporting it and left it to rot. It felt insane at the time. Why would they abandon a live service game instead of pushing it harder?

I get that GTA 6 will sell a ridiculous number of copies and the online mode will probably do fine at launch. But 'fine' might not be enough for Take-Two. If the bean counters see GTA 5 Online still pulling in more money because it has a bigger, younger, more conditioned audience, what's stopping them from treating GTA 6 Online like Red Dead Online? Just minimal updates, no real content drops, maybe a few recycled events while all the focus stays on the old game.

It's not like Rockstar hasn't done this before. Red Dead Online is the obvious example. They let it die slowly instead of giving it the GTA Online treatment. That decision never made sense to me from a player perspective, but from a profit perspective maybe it did. If the numbers weren't there, they cut bait.

So what's different this time? GTA 6 is the biggest release in gaming history. You'd think they'd want the online mode to be the new flagship. But if the launch window doesn't blow GTA 5 Online's revenue out of the water, I could see the suits getting nervous. And nervous suits make bad decisions.

Am I overthinking this, or is there a real chance GTA 6 Online gets the Red Dead treatment if the Shark Card money doesn't move over fast enough?

Source: r/GTA6 · Curated content.

Maybe, but I think the Red Dead comparison undersells one thing. RDO's economy was kind of busted from the start, gold bars were cheap, there wasn't much to spend on, and the grind loops never hooked people the way GTA Online's did. GTA 6 Online is presumably built around that same spending machinery from day one. So the incentive to keep feeding it seems way stronger. Could be wrong though, Take-Two has made weirder calls.