from forbes.com/si...on-pc/

 

Surprise, 'GTA 5' Is Also A Massive Hit On PC

Though we don’t have any official numbers from Rockstar, according to places that track this sort of thing, GTA 5 has just passed the 2 million sold mark on PC, judging by the number of folks who own a Steam copy of the game.

That’s 2 million in less than a month after release, which is a long way from its console launch (11.2 million copies in 24 hours, the all-time record for a game launch by a mile), but it’s impressive for the PC space all the same. The last official word we heard was that 45 million copies of the game had shipped to retailers, and sell-through estimates put sales at about that mark by now. Two million more sales of Grand Theft Auto V on PC only adds to that already enormous total.

The PC version of the game has been a long, long, long time coming, with some fans feeling like the day would never arrive at all. Rockstar did a new-gen re-release and inserted online heists before the PC port finally made it to market, but according to most, it was worth the wait. GTA 5 is a highly quality PC port in an age when that sort of thing is increasingly rare for game which are content to mostly rely on console sales. Not that “PC games are dying” or anything insipid like that, but the scene does have a notoriously rocky relationship with console ports, and it’s clear that Rockstar actually did save their best version of GTA 5 for last.

GTA 5 will likely prove to have a lot of longevity on PC, and 2 million copies sold this quickly is a great start. I believe GTA 4 had about 3.5 million lifetime PC sales, so GTA 5 has already done more than half that, and this is before the modding community has really taken off. It’s going to be interesting to see how Rockstar reacts to their already growing stable of modders, as so far, they’ve offered no official support (and a recent patch has actually disabled mods completely). It’s entirely possible that they were planning on partnering with Valve for phase two of Steam’s pay-for-mods store experiment, an experiment which has already failed spectacularly with the setting up and taking down of a paid store for Skyrim mods.

It’s possible Rockstar was waiting to see what happened there before announcing their own plans for mods, and now that it’s gone bust, that may throw a wrench into whatever plans they had. Their only statement about mods to date is that they’re focused on ensuring that GTA Online specifically is a fair, fun experience for everyone. That, however, has been a difficult goal to achieve. Despite their best intentions, PC GTA Online is still rife with cheaters and trolls, and many players have reported a downright frustrating play experience as a result. The best hack I’ve heard has players shooting other players with bags of money, forcing them to acquire billions of dollars, essentially negating the entire progression system of the game. Funny, but very, very mean.

So Rockstar will have to not only fix that, but also figure out a way to make sure that GTA 5 does its best to be the next Skyrim on PC, an open world game with infinite potential given the fact that it’s the most fleshed-out sandbox currently on the market, and the possibilities for modders are endless. On PC, your game can become immortal with proper mod support and a creative community, though given GTA 5’s success already, anything that happens with the PC version is just icing on the cake.

Unlike many game franchises these days, Rockstar is still of the mindset where they take years and years to develop one uber-hit. Now with the introduction of GTA Online, their goal is to keep updating that game with content in the interim before the inevitable GTA 6. That sequel is undoubtedly still years and years away, and in many ways GTA 5 is only just getting started now that it’s been ported to PC and introduced online heists, an incredibly important addition to GTA Online.

The game has proven to be a smash hit on Twitch, and has been hovering in the top five most viewed games on the site since launch, particularly impressive given that the other games in that list, CS: GO, League, Dota, Hearthstone, etc, are all competitive eSports, while people are just tuning into GTA 5 streams to watch players mess around and do funny things. But that’s the power of Grand Theft Auto, and with enough support from Rockstar, the game will live a very long and healthy life on PC.