Back during my time in secondary school, one of the most commonly addressed topics among my group of friends was the impending state of the latest Grand Theft Auto Online updates. It's sobering to think that a game that was being actively updated all that time ago is still getting worked on, makes one feel their age, but I suppose that is what happens when you game mode is making so money that it propels your game to being the most profitable entertainment product ever. What's that? Avengers Endgame just made $2.8 billion becoming the worlds highest grossing movie? GTA V is looking at $6 billion. And that figure is from November last year. Yeah, the folks over at Rockstar aren't exactly going hungry.
Back when me and my friends would anxiously discuss every change log, eager for the long-delayed Heist update, we noticed a couple of trends from the speculative YouTube community who kept us all informed on the game. It became something of a running joke about how grasping some of them would get in order to make their content. 'I data-mined the code and I can make out a Z, next update must be zombies!' I'm not even exaggerating, these guys were literally that desperate for clickbait. Even then, One theme in particular was a commonality amongst all of these GTA Online channels, apart from zombies, one piece of content that they all agreed was definitely coming but just couldn't get the timeframe down. That would be the opening of the mythical casinos. After every update, they would assure fans that the next one would be casino-time, and when that didn't pan out, just like your atypical doomsday prepper, they would move the goalposts. Next update. No, next update. And on and on.
Looking back, it was a bit silly that we even pretended to entertain any of these wild predictions. Afterall, GTA Online is a game that features a virtual bank account which can be bolstered via transactions from your real one. These 'Shark Cards' as GTA calls them, ('Microtransactions' as they're know everywhere else.) allow players to inject themselves with a sudden influx of cash. This may be necessary for accessing some of the new content that Rockstar adds which, whilst being ostensibly free to all, always comes with a substantial in-game barrier-to-entry cost. It's genius when you think about it. Free DLC that you either have to pay for or grind towards like it's your day job. But there's comes a catch. When you equate real world value to virtual currency, suddenly adding a virtual fake casino doesn't feel so fake anymore. Who knows what kind of substantial community/interest group/government backlash adding a casino might incur? There's no way that even Rockstar would be brazen enough to stir up trouble like that.
I do feel a little bad for criticizing Rockstar right now, because I just reached the epilogue portion of Red Dead Redemption 2 and am convinced that it is the greatest character-driven story that Rockstar have ever told. I Kinda feel like a hypocrite, praising with one hand and chastising with the other. But I choose to believe that the division that creates games is entirely separate to the division that maintains GTA online so that I feel better about calling this practise abhorrent. Now, I usually try to take a middle-ground stance when it comes to topics but I always get a little bit incensed when it is the AAA gaming industry trying to fleece us for yet more money. I know that video game prices haven't adjusted to account for inflation, but there is a pretty decent reason why. Games used to be vastly overpriced for a very long time. Now the gaming community is in a good place where gaming companies are making money hand-over-fist, Rockstar even made enough to trump the biggest movie ever, and yet they still walk around with the donation jar playing the starving artist.
This all comes days after the UK Parliament (That's us.) ruled that lootboxes do not meet the legal definition of gambling as it currently exists. Whether this is their way of letting lootboxes off the hook or telling AAA companies to prepare for a revision is unclear, but you can imagine that EA, King and Activison are breathing a sigh of relief either way. There is still the open case that is rattling around some US senators, but I hope I offend noone by predicting that the American legal department will prove so slow that gaming will have moved onto it's next big, greedy controversy before the lootbox case sees the light of a single courtroom. If the gaming bigwigs can manage to secure both the UK and US in their pro-lootbox camp, then the other big markets of the world are likely to follow suit. Afterall, most of the world either follows America's entertainment trends or tries to mimic them. (looking at you, China.) So even after Rockstar's upset, lootboxes are still likely safe. (For better or for worse.)
None of that makes it any easier for me to stomach Rockstar's audacity for envisioning and releasing this expansion as it is. It just seems so out-of-character for Grand Theft Auto. Rather than satirizing the more avaricious elements of our pro-capitalist society, like the GTA series used to do, Rockstar have instead just chosen to contribute to it. It's as though they've crossed 'The Sims'-Rubicon of losing their roots and becoming the very things that they used to mock. They are now the people they vowed to hate. Oh, just like Red Dead Redemption 2! Maybe this is all going according to plan. Some incredibly intricate plan to mimic the actions of the morally bankrupt so flawlessly so as to appear to be one of their number. I can imagine Rockstar now fiddling with their chin hairs, telling me to "Have some GODDAMN FAITH!".
All that being said, I've never been one to tell people how to live their life. People have been anticipating this casino update for years, I even used to be one of them. As long as no one ends up getting hopelessly hooked and sinking their entire life savings into virtual slot machines (I'm literally going to setup a google alert so I know the exact second when it inevitably happens.) then it's all fun and games, I suppose. Afterall, It's not as though people have the incentive of winning real money to tie them to the slots. (Otherwise this game would absolutely fit the legal definition of gambling and would be shut down before anyone could utter the word "satire".) Instead you just have the chance to win chips, money, unique clothing and Respect Points. (Talk about a kick in the nuts. They literally coded in the possibility for players to win the most useless currency in the game.) It doesn't take away from the fact that Rockstar readily employed the usual casino dopamine-stroking tactics in order to hook players, but it will almost definitely be enough to prevent this virtual casino being as harmful as a real one would be.
That hasn't stopped Rockstar from stepping on eggshells for The Diamond Casino's introduction. Someone at Rockstar seems to have been actually paying attention to recent gaming news, no one important enough to have the expansion delayed a few months, but someone important enough to convince the higher ups to take preemptive measures. Rockstar have blocked access to the new content in 57 countries that we know of. (With no forewarning by-the-by. Way to look out for the consumers, team.) It seems that they still have the presence of mind to try to circumvent backlash when it would hit them the hardest, still working on their empathy though.
You may have noticed that I have been a little bit critical of Rockstar's GTA Online department throughout the course of this blog. Eagle eyed readers may even have been able to pick up on the reason why. But just to be clear, I don't care about The Diamond Casino update. Well, I don't care enough to do anything productive about it, at least. I think it is incredibly tasteless and unbecoming of one of the most legendary studios in gaming, but I don't play GTA Online anymore so what do I care? My issue is the optics this shines, not just on Grand Theft Auto, but on the entire gaming world. This update has essentially flipped the cutis to government bodies who were already gearing to flex their legislative muscles on gaming, and dares them to try something. It is incredibly irresponsible. But then, this is just as much EA's fault for being just as avaricious in their own games. The whole thing is a huge complicated mess and I just can't help but shake the feeling that the consumer is going to get the brunt of the fallout, whatever occurs. So what can we, as concerned gamers, do? Absolutely diddly-squat. We can sit and pray for a miracle where everything works out in the end. But hey, if push comes to shove, we can just steal a boat and head to Tahiti.
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