GTA 5 Revenue And User Statistics In 2026

Grand Theft Auto 5 is one of the most popular video games of all time. Released in 2013, many gamers believe it’s hard to top.

There are around 18-19 million players per month, with around 175,000 concurrent players at any given time. Total revenue exceeded $7.6 billion, with over 175 million copies sold, and continues to rise.

In this article, we will be delving deeper into GTA 5 user and revenue statistics, showing you just how popular the game actually is and how successful it has been. We will also take a peek at the future of GTA and give you some secrets about the expected release of GTA 6.

Let’s get into it.

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What Is GTA 5?

GTA 5 is the fifth game in the HD Universe of GTA and the fifteenth installment of the Grand Theft Auto video game series. It is set in San Andreas, a fictional state based on Southern California, and Los Santos, a fictional city based on Los Angeles.

The game allows you to follow three protagonists as they commit crimes and heists and try to avoid aggressive law enforcement action. You can play from a third person or first person perspective, and the online version of the game allows up to 30 players to play in a multiplayer game mode.

As a player, you can complete missions or freely roam the countryside of San Andreas. There’s quite a bit of fighting, shooting, and fun action in the game.

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These three protagonists sometimes meet and work with each other while completing missions, although some missions are completed by only one of them. You can switch between these three characters while completing missions.

The game was released by Rockstar Games in 2013 and won many awards. It is often considered one of the best video games produced of all time.

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GTA 5 User and Revenue Statistics

With that brief introduction, let’s take a look at some user and revenue statistics that will show you just how popular GTA 5 is.

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Number of Concurrent, Monthly, and Daily Players on Steam

The number of concurrent players of Grand Theft Auto 5 on Steam was very high in 2020, when it reached 220,000 concurrent players in February 2020, according to Statista.

Most likely, that was because a lot of people were home at the time and did not have anything to do, so they turned to video games to keep themselves busy.

Therefore, it is unlikely that the number of players will return to those levels anytime soon. In March 2023, the number of concurrent players was only 174,000, although it reached over 197,000 concurrent players in July 2023, perhaps due to summer vacation.

ActivePlayer maintains a live table showing the number of players for the current month and the past months. You can see that in the first few months of 2023, around 18-19 million players have been playing GTA 5 per month.

Also, the average number of players per day tends to be around 1,300,000.

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Number of Players on Other Devices

That’s just the number of online players on Steam. We know that information because Steam Charts share the data, but when it comes to the number of players on PlayStation, PC, and other operating systems, we’re a bit in the dark, although various estimates have been made.

The reason we don’t know those numbers is that Rockstar Games doesn’t release them. Nevertheless, there are various estimates online, so let’s take a look.

One estimate put the number of players on PS4 and PC combined at 140 million players. Meanwhile, there were 72.5 million players on Xbox One and Xbox 360 combined.

However, those estimates are a bit outdated, and the number of players on each platform has most likely grown since then. Besides, since they are not official stats from Rockstar Games, it is important to take them with a grain of salt.

What about players on PC and PS4 – how do they compare? While estimates vary greatly, it is estimated that the number of players using GTA 5 on PlayStation is around 2.5-5 higher than the number of players on PC.

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In Which Countries Are People Playing Grand Theft Auto 5?

Let’s now take a look at a breakdown of the players of GTA 5 by country. In which countries is GTA 5 the most popular?

Well, according to Fiction Horizon, the United States contributes the most to the GTA 5 player count, with over 11 percent of players coming from the good ol’ USA. Meanwhile, Brazil and Russia follow closely behind, with Brazil contributing over eight percent of players and Russia almost six.

Surprisingly, Germany and Poland come next, followed by various other countries and territories that make up the rest of the worldwide GTA 5 player count.

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How Many People Are Watching GTA 5 Livestreams on Twitch?

In addition to playing the game, many people follow others as they play the game and stream it live on Twitch. On Twitch, it is listed that Grant Theft Auto 5 has over 61 million followers.

However, there are people who don’t follow it but still watch it. So how many people are watching it per month?

Statista has the answers for us. In January 2023, 134 thousand people watched GTA 5 on Twitch live.

The number was highest in 2021. In May 2021, there was a record high of 341 thousand people watching Grand Theft Auto 5 live on Twitch.

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How Many People Have Purchased or Play GTA 5 in Total?

GTA 5 is one of the top selling video games of all time. By February 2023, it had sold over 175 million copies, according to Statista.

According to Digital Trends, that makes GTA 5 the second-best selling video game after Minecraft. It’s been quite a success!

Of course, GTA 5, which was released in 2013, is not the only video game released by the GTA franchise. The Grand Theft Auto franchise has, in total, sold over 370 million copies of its games.

That means that GTA 5 makes up a significant portion of the total sales of the Grand Theft Auto franchise.

GTA 5 is also the best-selling video game released on the PlayStation platform, according to Statista. In the first year, it sold the most copies – 32.5 million copies in 2013 alone.

While sales dropped somewhat from 2014 to 2018, they picked up again in 2019.

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How Much Has GTA 5 Earned in Revenue?

Being the second top-selling video game of all time, Grand Theft Auto 5 has brought in quite a lot of revenue to Rockstar, the creator of GTA 5. In the first 24 hours after being released, it generated $800 million, reaching a whopping $1 billion in just three days!

In total, Grand Theft Auto 5 has earned a lifetime revenue of $7.68 billion, and that number is only increasing as sales continue to come in. It remains one of the most popular video games of all time, and people are always buying new copies, despite so many people already owning the game.

Remember, revenue isn’t coming from game sales alone. Even people who already have the game (and are using the online version) continue to buy in-game purchases, and Rockstar also has a store where it sells GTA 5 merch and accessories.

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Why Is There No GTA 6 Yet?

Many Grand Theft Auto fans have been anxiously awaiting a new update. While Grand Theft Auto has released over 40 free content updates, it has yet to release an entirely new version of the game.

Why is that? It’s been 10 years since the release of Grand Theft Auto 5, and Grand Theft Auto 6 is still not here yet.

The reason most likely lies with the extreme popularity of Grand Theft Auto 5. It is simply hard to top that.

People will be looking forward to an entirely new game that can break the industry just like GTA 5 did. That is quite a feat to accomplish, and Grand Theft Auto probably doesn’t want to release something prematurely that might end up disappointing users who wanted something more.

When you think about how much work and money Grand Theft Auto put into GTA 5, that is not surprising at all. In fact, they started working on it back in 2008, years before it was released – they really tried to make it perfect.

Remember, Grand Theft Auto 4 was only released in 2008. That means that as soon as they were done with the production and release of GTA 4, and perhaps earlier, they were already planning ahead and working on the next release, which only came half a decade later.

Furthermore, an estimated $265 million was spent on the production and development of Grand Theft Auto 5. It wasn’t a budget release!

In fact, that marks it one of the highest budget video game releases of all time, even surpassing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

Fun fact: Cyberpunk 2077 cost $316 in development, but it is not nearly as popular as Grand Theft Auto 5.

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Is GTA 6 on the Horizon?

Well, it’s quite clear that Rockstar is taking its time with the release of Grand Theft Auto 6. All the suspense and buildup is causing GTA fans to anxiously await the new update – surely, it will be something big.

So, is there any news about it?

Rockstar has been keeping pretty mum about the whole thing – it hasn’t disclosed much. In February 2022, Rockstar merely hinted that GTA 6 was in development, but it was enough to spark curiosity and rumors among diehard fans.

It stuck that update towards the bottom of a press release, in a section titled, “What’s Next.” It acknowledged the “unprecedented longevity of GTA 5” and recognized that many fans have been asking about a new release.

It then confirmed that it has been waiting so long because the GTA franchise is always aiming to deliver beyond what it has previously delivered – hinting that GTA 6 is going to be much better than GTA 5.

It then stated that, “We are pleased to confirm that active development for the next entry in the Grand Theft Auto series is well underway.” However, it refused to elaborate or give any details, only telling readers to stay tuned and that “We look forward to sharing more as soon as we are ready.”

That wasn’t the end of it, though. In September 2022, a trove of screenshots and videos were leaked from the alleged production of GTA 6 by a hacker going by the name Teapotuberhacker.

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The leaked files were initially released on the GTA Forums, and Teapotuberhacker claimed he or she might leak additional files, including source code and assets, soon.

However, not everyone on the forum believed them at first. There was a lot of skepticism from posters who thought the files might be entirely fake.

One of the reasons for the skepticism and hesitation on the part of other forum members was that Teapotuberhacker merely posted a link that let users download the files.

However, many people thought it was just a virus-infected link and refused to click it or download files from there, asking Teapotuberhacker to post the actual screenshots in the forum thread itself.

Eventually, though, as people started taking a look, the skepticism started wearing away, with many forum posters swearing that it must be real. Others were still skeptical, pointing out that it looked like “carefully curated nonsense” or giving various reasons why it probably isn’t real.

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Has it been settled? Not really.

The debate is still ongoing, and until the official release of GTA 6, we will never know for sure whether the leak contained real files. Even if it did, remember that GTA 6 is still in production, so things can change and the leak might not accurately reflect the way the game will actually be.

What else do we know about Grand Theft Auto 6? Again, we don’t know anything for sure, but there have been rumors.

One report stated that Rockstar will develop a female Latina protagonist for GTA 6. This particular report comes from Bloomberg, a well-trusted publication and not some gaming blog, so it’s much more reliable.

The information is based on anonymous and former developers at Rockstar. The report states that Rockstar experienced a shift in company culture and that was reflected in the Grand Theft Auto franchise as well.

For example, GTA 5 removed a mode of play called Cops ‘n’ Crooks after the debate about police violence following the death of George Floyd. Rockstar also narrowed its gender gap pay, and the company, overall, was trying to be more inclusive.

According to a tweet by Jason Schreier, the Bloomberg reporter who wrote the article, the changes started in 2018, when employees started going public about the culture of abuse at the company. One employee called it “a boys’ club transformed into a real company.”

That was one reason the release of GTA 6 is taking so long, as employees are getting used to the new company culture, but employee morale is reportedly better than ever before, and the company is now a great place to work.

Another Bloomberg report states that while some people were expecting GTA 6 to be released in the second half of 2023 or the first half of 2025, other developers were skeptical of that timeline and expected further delays.

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Also, this second Bloomberg report revealed additional information about GTA 6, other than the fact that it will have a main female character.

The original plan was for GTA 6 to have a map modeled after North and South America, including large territories from both continents. In the end, this plan didn’t work out, and the developers allegedly settled on a map that is a fictional version of Miami, but with the plan to continually add new cities and missions.

Yet another report, citing Axios, revealed that the original plan for GTA 6 was to have four main protagonists and three cities, instead of the usual one city that players are accustomed to. However, these plans were later scaled back.

A lot of people have speculated about the setting of GTA 6. One Twitter user, going by the name Gaming Detective, claimed that Rockstar has released various teasers for the game without explicitly mentioning them as such.

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Those can be seen here and seem to confirm prior leaks that claimed that the setting will be in Vice City.

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Wrapping It Up

GTA 5 has definitely been a success, being among the top video games of all time. However, it has been around for so long, and GTA 6 is definitely on the horizon.

While we don’t know exactly when it will be released, there’s a good chance it will happen in the next year or two. When that happens, GTA 5 might fall out of popularity, as GTA 6 is supposed to overtake it and be a much better version that will wow even the biggest GTA 5 fans.