Los Santos, San Andreas — 2013
Grand Theft Auto V
The 230-million-copy giant that built the road to GTA 6 · September 17, 2013
GTA V at a glance
The Three Protagonists
For the first time in the series, GTA V told one story through three playable leads — and let you switch between them almost any time, even mid-mission.
Michael De Santa
A retired bank robber living unhappily ever after in a Rockford Hills mansion under witness protection — until his past walks back through the door. The family-therapy sessions alone are worth the price of admission.
Franklin Clinton
A young repo man from South Los Santos hunting for a way out of the hood and into something bigger. Franklin's driving special ability — slowing time behind the wheel — made him the getaway driver of choice.
Trevor Philips
Michael's unhinged former partner, running Trevor Philips Enterprises out of a Sandy Shores trailer. Equal parts terrifying and hilarious, Trevor became one of the most memorable characters in gaming.
Signature Features
Character Switching
Zoom out to a satellite view and drop into another protagonist's life in progress — Trevor might wake up on a mountain, in a dumpster, or worse. No game had done it before at this scale.
Heists
Multi-stage setups with crew selection, approach choices and real consequences. The Union Depository job remains one of the great mission finales in the series.
Los Santos & Blaine County
A satirical, dense recreation of Southern California — from Vinewood hills to Sandy Shores desert — bigger than GTA IV, Red Dead Redemption and San Andreas combined at launch.
First-Person Mode
Added with the 2014 PS4/Xbox One release: the entire game playable from a fully modeled first-person view, effectively two games in one.
Rockstar Editor
A full machinima suite with camera controls, effects and Director Mode — the tool behind a decade of GTA V fan films (including the kind we host in our Video Vault).
The Soundtrack & Radio
Seventeen radio stations, hundreds of licensed tracks, and an original score — a first for the series — that adapts dynamically to missions.
Los Santos & Blaine County
One map, two worlds: a sprawling satire of Los Angeles stitched to a desert full of meth labs, cults and one very suspicious mountain. Every corner below is a place players know like their own street.
Vinewood & Rockford Hills
Movie studios, mansion rows and the walk of fame — Michael's gilded cage. The Vinewood sign is the most photographed spot in the game, and the Oriental Theater still premieres Meltdown.
Strawberry, Davis & Grove Street
Franklin's stomping grounds — and a homecoming for series veterans. Grove Street returns from San Andreas, families and all, a full console generation later.
Vespucci & Del Perro
Muscle Beach, the pleasure pier, canal-side apartments and a boardwalk that never sleeps. The best sunset in the game happens over the Del Perro ferris wheel.
Sandy Shores & the Alamo Sea
Trevor country. A shrinking salt lake ringed by trailer parks, biker bars and Trevor Philips Enterprises' world headquarters (a trailer). Loosely a love letter to the real Salton Sea.
Paleto Bay & Mount Chiliad
A sleepy logging town that hosts one of the loudest missions in the game, in the shadow of the tallest peak in San Andreas — and the mural that launched a decade of conspiracy hunting.
The Pacific Floor
A full seabed with wrecks, hidden packages, a crashed UFO and a sunken hatch that blinks. GTA V shipped an entire ocean most players never saw — and detailed it anyway.
“A city built on self-help, celebrity worship and second mortgages.”
The Five Big Scores
The single-player campaign is built around heists — each with crew choices, approach options and a take that depends on how well you planned. Dashed lines, planning-board style. Spoilers kept light.
The Jewel Store Job
The one that gets the band back together. Smart & loud approaches, your first crew picks, and the moment Michael's retirement officially ends on live television.Take: ~$4.9M
The Merryweather Heist
A freighter, a submarine, and a prize the government wants back so badly you don't get to keep a dime. The heist that pays nothing — on purpose.Take: $0 (long story)
The Paleto Score
Three crooks, one bank, half the sheriff's department and a minigun. The loudest fifteen minutes in the campaign, scored to a military drum line.Take: ~$8M
The Bureau Raid
Break into the FIB's own tower — by window-cleaning rig or by fire crew. The rare heist where the target is evidence, not money.Take: your freedom
The Big One
The Union Depository: $201 million in gold bullion and the finale the whole game builds toward. Obvious or subtle, chopper or train — then one last choice that decides everything.Take: ~$201M in gold
Your Crew Matters
Cheap gunmen drop the loot, rookie drivers crash the bikes, and a good hacker buys you seconds in the vault. Crew members even level up if they survive — loyalty, priced in.Take: it depends
GTA Online
Launched two weeks after the base game in October 2013, GTA Online grew from a rocky start into the most profitable side of the whole franchise — and it is still being updated in 2026.
2013–2015 · Finding Its Feet
Early days of races, deathmatches and apartment garages, capped by the long-promised Online Heists update in 2015 — still one of the biggest player-count spikes in the game's history.
2016–2019 · The Business Era
CEO offices, biker clubhouses, bunkers, nightclubs and the Diamond Casino — the updates that turned Online into a criminal-empire sim and made Shark Cards a billion-dollar business.
2020–2023 · Islands & Icons
The Cayo Perico Heist added the game's first solo-friendly heist on a brand-new island; The Contract brought Franklin and Dr. Dre back to Los Santos; Chop Shop closed 2023 with vehicle theft rings.
2024–2026 · The Long Goodbye
Bounty hunting with Maude, money-laundering fronts, and steady seasonal events keep Online alive as the community counts down to GTA 6 — Rockstar has confirmed Online support continues past launch.
- 2013October 1 — GTA Online launches two weeks after the base game, and promptly melts under the load. Races, deathmatches, apartments and a rocky first month nobody who was there forgets.
- 2015Heists finally arrive in March — the most requested feature in the game's history — followed a month later by the PC release and the Rockstar Editor.
- 2016The business era begins. Finance & Felony makes everyone a CEO; Bikers hands out clubhouses. Crime becomes a career with an org chart.
- 2017Bunkers, hangars and the apocalypse. Gunrunning and Smuggler's Run in the summer, then the Doomsday Heist in December — three acts, jetpacks included.
- 2018After Hours opens Los Santos nightlife: your own club, real-world DJs, and Gay Tony back from Liberty City to run the door.
- 2019The Diamond Casino & Resort opens in July, and by December players are robbing it. The Casino Heist's multiple approaches quietly became the blueprint for everything after.
- 2020The Cayo Perico Heist lands in December: a whole new island, the game's first fully solo heist, and the Music Locker underneath it. Online's biggest year — 20 million copies of GTA V sold in 2020 alone.
- 2021Tuners and The Contract. Car culture gets its own scene in the summer; in December, Franklin returns as a "celebrity solutions agent" with a client named Dr. Dre — and new Dre music ships inside a video game first.
- 2022The Criminal Enterprises in July, then Los Santos Drug Wars in December kicks off a two-part psychedelic tour of Blaine County's least legal industry.
- 2023Mercenaries and the Chop Shop. San Andreas Mercenaries in June; December's Chop Shop adds vehicle-theft rings — and the year Rockstar acquires the FiveM team (see the mod section below).
- 2024Bounties and sabotage. Maude's bail-office business in June's Bottom Dollar Bounties; December's Agents of Sabotage sends players undercover.
- 2025Money Fronts launders cash through car washes and smoke shops in June — then December's A Safehouse in the Hills finally adds mansions, a full Mission Creator, and the return of Michael De Santa himself.
- 2026Still going. A fresh summer update landed in July, and Rockstar has confirmed Online support continues past GTA 6's launch. Twelve years of free updates and counting.
The Online Heist Ladder
Every big multiplayer score, in the order players climb them. Each one taught Rockstar something the next one used.
The Original Five
Fleeca, Prison Break, Humane Labs, Series A and the Pacific Standard Job — four-player, one shared cut, and the birth of a thousand "who fumbled the bags" arguments.Top take: $1.25M
The Doomsday Heist
Three acts, two-to-four players, orbital cannons and a literal doomsday device under Mount Chiliad. The most cinematic thing Online has ever done.Top take: $1.5M+
The Diamond Casino Heist
Silent & Sneaky, The Big Con, or Aggressive — scope the casino, pick your entrance, and pray the vault has diamonds this week.Top take: $3.6M
The Cayo Perico Heist
The first heist you can run entirely alone: infiltrate a drug lord's private island, by air, sea or torpedo. Online's money meta ever since.Top take: ~$4M+
The Contract
Not a classic heist — a VIP story: recover Dr. Dre's stolen phone, full missions solo-friendly, and a $1M payday with none of the setup grind.Flat take: $1M
The Mansion Era
A Safehouse in the Hills traded masks for marble: three luxury estates, Michael's return, and a Mission Creator that hands players the keys to the job board itself.Take: the high life
Records & Legacy
Fastest Entertainment Launch Ever
$815 million in its first 24 hours and $1 billion inside three days — faster than any game, film or album in history at the time. The record still stands in gaming.
Second Best-Selling Game of All Time
230 million copies sold as of May 2026 (Take-Two's fiscal Q4 report), behind only Minecraft (and Tetris, depending on how you count its many lives) — and it still moves roughly 5 million copies every quarter, twelve-plus years after launch.
A $10-Billion Franchise Pillar
The Grand Theft Auto series has generated over $10 billion since GTA V's 2013 release, and the franchise as a whole has passed 465 million copies sold.
Still Alive in 2026
Around 18 million people play GTA V every month right now — the same year its successor launches. No other game has ever bridged three console generations at this scale.
Radio Los Santos
GTA has always been half game, half mixtape. V shipped seventeen stations and — a series first — an original score that swells and cuts with the action.
Seventeen and Counting
From Radio Los Santos to Rebel Radio, with real DJs playing themselves — Flying Lotus running FlyLo FM, Kenny Loggins on Los Santos Rock Radio. Later years added The Music Locker, Still Slipping Los Santos and more.
A Series First
Tangerine Dream, The Alchemist, Oh No and Woody Jackson composed a dynamic score that reacts to chases, heists and hikes up Chiliad — something no GTA had ever had before.
Music as Content
The Contract shipped new, exclusive Dr. Dre tracks inside the game. PC players got Self Radio for their own MP3s. And yes — the pause-menu switch to turn the radio into a podcast of Blaine County talk radio exists.
The Mod Community
On PC, GTA V stopped being one game around 2016 and became a platform. Some of the most-watched gaming content on Earth runs on what this community built — single-player and private servers only, never public GTA Online.
Script Hook V & Friends
Alexander Blade's Script Hook V is the keystone nearly every single-player mod stands on — trainers like Menyoo, chaos mods that scramble the game live on stream, and thousands of scripts on gta5-mods.com.
LSPDFR & NaturalVision
LSPDFR flips the entire premise — you play the police, callouts and all — and built its own YouTube ecosystem. NaturalVision Evolved pushes the 2013 engine somewhere near photorealism.
The OpenIV Moment
In June 2017 the essential modding tool OpenIV received a cease-and-desist — and the community review-bombed GTA V to "Overwhelmingly Negative" on Steam. Within days the decision was walked back, and single-player modding has been tolerated ever since.
FiveM & RedM
Cfx.re's frameworks let anyone run a custom GTA V server with its own rules, scripts, maps and economy — entirely separate from GTA Online. In August 2023, Rockstar did the once-unthinkable and hired the team, making FiveM official.
Roleplay & NoPixel
GTA RP servers like NoPixel turned the game into improvised television — cops, criminals, lawyers and taxi drivers played in character for hours. In 2021 it made GTA V the most-watched game on Twitch, eight years after launch.
Where the Line Is
The community's long-standing deal with Rockstar: mod single-player and private servers freely, never public GTA Online. It's why the scene has thrived for a decade — and why we'd give the same advice to anyone starting out.
Mysteries & Deep Trivia
Twelve years on, people are still finding things. Tap any one to expand.
The Mount Chiliad mural
Bigfoot is real (sort of)
Kifflom, brother-brother
The ghost of Mount Gordo
You can play as a seagull
North Yankton still exists
The ocean floor is a whole game
The therapy sessions are graded
Release Timeline
2013
PS3 & Xbox 360. The original launch — 11 million copies sold on day one.
2014
PS4 & Xbox One. Rebuilt visuals, first-person mode, and returning-player bonuses.
2015
PC. 4K support, 60fps, and the Rockstar Editor that birthed the machinima scene.
2022
PS5 & Xbox Series X|S. The Expanded & Enhanced edition: ray tracing, faster loading, standalone GTA Online.
2025
PC Enhanced. The next-gen upgrade came to PC with ray tracing and cross-progression via the Rockstar launcher.
2026 →
The handover. GTA V passes the torch on November 19 — follow the countdown on our home page.
Grand Theft Auto V Screenshots
Official shots first, then what the community is still making a decade on.
Official
From the Community
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