You can already spend your hard-earned (see: hard-heisted) money on some pretty lavish properties in GTA Online. But fans have always longed for the ultimate wealth statement to call home: a mansion. A datamine earlier in the year suggested that this long-requested addition was in the pipeline, and today Rockstar has teased that a GTA Online mansion update could be arriving soon. As well as this exciting hint, it’s also confirmed that GTA Online is being rolled into its GTA+ subscription service.
Players have been accruing wealth in GTA 5 Online for a decade now, and with the GTA 6 release date likely coinciding with a new evolution of the sandbox game, there’s only time for one or two more surprises. More importantly, there’s not long left for players to spend all the cash they’ve earned from heists, casino wins, shady business enterprises, and generally terrorizing others in Los Santos. Sure, you can buy a yacht or funnel money into the most expensive cars, but mansions would be the ultimate flex and a high-ticket item that players could empty their virtual accounts on.
Following the Money Fronts update earlier in the year, which introduced a money laundering system and dodgy business mogul Mr. Faber, a datamine revealed early signs of mansions coming to GTA Online. A line of code read: “You have earned an exclusive discount on a future property purchase with Prix Luxury Real Estate. They will be in contact again soon when properties become available.”
Prix Luxury Real Estate was a name we’d never seen before, but in today’s weekly blog post about what’s happening in GTA Online, Rockstar drops a teaser that features this mysterious company.
Under the heading “Get ready to move up in the world,” Rockstar writes: “Starting next week, make sure to get in on the ground floor of a new extravagant era in Los Santos luxury real estate. Raf will be in touch…” Raf, for the unaware, is a close business partner of Mr. Faber. Alongside this message is the screenshot below, which shows the logo of Prix Luxury Real Estate and the message “Coming soon.”
While those Raf teasers will start appearing in just a matter of days, the mansion update itself seems destined for December in what will likely be the last big content drop for this iteration of GTA Online. Tuesday, December 9 is being touted as the potential date, based on the typical cadence and the start of the new GTA+ monthly offerings, but there’s no official word from Rockstar on that just yet.
Speaking of the developer’s subscription service, GTA Online has now been folded into it. Previously, membership could get you in-game bonuses each month, like extra cash to spend, but now the game itself is available to play through GTA+. Those on consoles will still need to pay for online access as per usual through Game Pass or PS Plus though, just as a reminder. GTA Online now joins older Grand Theft Auto games and Rockstar classics like Bully, Red Dead Redemption, and L.A. Noire.
In my personal view, I see this as Rockstar all but confirming the fate of GTA Online – if it was going to keep it as its main sandbox experience post-GTA 6, it definitely wouldn’t be rolling it into GTA+. An all-new Online experience seems inevitable now.
