GTA Online makes a hell of a lot less microtransaction money on PC, going by alleged leaked Rockstar data, with PS5 players paying millions of dollars a week.
Console players are disproportionately more likely to be whales:
GTA Online made $9,592,109 a week across September 2025 to April 2026. Nine million dollars a week! Why, you could buy almost all the DLC for a Paradox grand strategy game with that!
Of the total, $8,245,974 was from console,
Which makes sense, PC players are able to do free mods and more shit, even if not in GTA
Console games are more lockdown by nature so it makes sense they pay more for micro transactions.
On PC, you can play GTA5 online without GTAO thanks to great mods. Want to just play tag with your friends online in GTA5? No need to engage in the microtransaction BS that is GTAO.
Of course. But this article is about the cash cow that is GTAO. GTAO is the most profitable game in the history of gaming. It’s so substantial that it makes sense to consider it a separate thing for discussion.
Story mode, where “free mods” are totally cool, is not making ongoing revenue from people who purchased GTAV. And conflating the two with a comment about mods is off target.
But the post you responded to was talking about console having more whales than PC. Higher competition on PC is one of the reasons. I think it is dead on target. If console players could play FiveM, something tells me a lot less of them would be sucked into GTAO.
Tldr:
Console players are disproportionately more likely to be whales:
Which makes sense, PC players are able to do free mods and more shit, even if not in GTA
Console games are more lockdown by nature so it makes sense they pay more for micro transactions.
This is GTAO. So calling the disruptive hacks and cheating “free mods” is strange. Hacking and cheating in multiplayer games sucks.
On PC, you can play GTA5 online without GTAO thanks to great mods. Want to just play tag with your friends online in GTA5? No need to engage in the microtransaction BS that is GTAO.
Of course. But this article is about the cash cow that is GTAO. GTAO is the most profitable game in the history of gaming. It’s so substantial that it makes sense to consider it a separate thing for discussion.
Story mode, where “free mods” are totally cool, is not making ongoing revenue from people who purchased GTAV. And conflating the two with a comment about mods is off target.
No one is attacking friendly mods.
But the post you responded to was talking about console having more whales than PC. Higher competition on PC is one of the reasons. I think it is dead on target. If console players could play FiveM, something tells me a lot less of them would be sucked into GTAO.
Well, “free mods” does not describe the Rockstar owned and run FiveM to me. But fair enough, I guess.
Rockstar bought FiveM because it was getting huge. They didn’t create it, and would have much rather it not exist.