*GTAOL* Rakes in $500 Million a Year! Old Consoles Are Still Holding the Fort

Some games are like a city: versions change, yet the streetlights stay on. GTAOL is clearly one of them. Recently, after Rockstar refused to pay a ransom, the hacker group ShinyHunters released part of the data obtained from compromised servers, and more information was later moved to public forums. Most of the leaked content revolves around GTAOL and Red Dead Online, but what stands out most is not the incident itself — it’s that these two online games are still steadily “printing money” to this day.

Let’s start with the most intuitive set of numbers. GTAOL has nearly 10 million weekly active players across all platforms, while Red Dead Online sits at just under 1 million, a gap in scale that is practically an entire street apart. Based on the leaked data, from September 2025 to April 2026, GTAOL generated about $1.32 million in average daily revenue, about $9.59 million weekly, and nearly $500 million annually; meanwhile, from June 2024 to April 2026, Red Dead Online brought in about $510,000 in average weekly revenue and around $26 million annually. In industry terms, this is not “still making money” — it is “still a cash cow.”

Even more interesting is the player distribution, which looks like a city population map and breaks down GTAOL’s vitality with striking clarity. The PS5 version has 3474021 weekly active players, the PS4 version 1889729, Xbox Series X|S 1129023, Xbox One 1026695, and PC 894621. The article notes that about 35% of GTAOL players are still on last-generation consoles such as PS4 and Xbox One, which suggests that Rockstar’s continued support for older platforms over the years has not merely been a matter of “serving nostalgia,” but a highly practical business decision.

If these numbers are placed on a longer timeline, GTAOL’s commercial design becomes even clearer. The leaked information shows that from November 12, 2014 to April 2, 2024, Shark Cards generated about $5 billion in revenue for Rockstar. The United States remains the top revenue-contributing region, followed by the United Kingdom and Germany, which also means that GTAOL’s core paying audience is still firmly rooted in mature console markets and the English-speaking cultural sphere. For an online mode that has been running this long to maintain such a high level of spending willingness, the key is not a one-time explosion, but the compound effect of continuous updates, content loops, and social stickiness.

From a player’s perspective, this set of data also leads to a very practical conclusion: if you are still hesitating about whether to jump into GTAOL now, at least you do not need to worry about dead servers, especially since the console ecosystem remains highly active. But if your goal is simply newer content and a better experience, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S are clearly more suitable than older consoles, because while legacy platforms still have large populations, they also mean technical limitations are still dragging down the ceiling. As for Red Dead Online, it has not entirely lost its value — it is just that compared with GTAOL, it feels more like an old West where people still stop by, rather than a sleepless city buzzing every night.

My first reaction after seeing this leak was not shock at how much GTAOL makes, but that there is finally data confirming what everyone already sensed: this game is no longer just an add-on mode for GTA5, but one of Rockstar’s most important long-term revenue engines. When an online game can span two generations of consoles, cover nearly 10 million weekly active players, and continue pumping out cash, it has already evolved from a “hit product” into a “platform-level business.” And that may also be Rockstar’s greatest trump card for the future — the one hardest to let go of, and the one least likely to be easily replicated.