Rockstar Games was hacked a few days ago by ShinyHunters who threatened to make the stolen data public if Rockstar refused to pay the ransom before April 13. Rockstar confirmed they were hacked but said the stolen data was insignificant and did not contain any personal information of players.
As promised, ShinyHunters leaked the stolen data after the ransom was not paid. Among the data revealed were the number of Grand Theft Auto Online, Red Dead Online players and the revenue generated by these two online games.
Grand Theft Auto Online (GTAO) has an average of almost 10 million active players per week which generates almost $500 million in revenue per year for Rockstar Games. The most used platform by GTAO players is Playstation 5 with almost 3.5 million weekly players followed by PlayStation 4 with almost 1.9 million weekly players. Surprisingly, PC is at the bottom with around 900,000 weekly active players, which is lower than on Xbox Series S/X.
The leaked data also gives a reason why Red Dead Online (RDO) seems to have been abandoned by Rockstar Games. Despite being labeled as one of the best games ever made, RDO only has around 1 million weekly active players, generating $26.4 million in revenue per year.
So it's no surprise that even though GTA VI will launch on consoles on November 19, Rockstar Games is still silent on when the PC version will be released to the public. With GTA VI's production cost reportedly reaching $2 billion, its launch will need to be a blockbuster from day one to recoup its investment before the new GTAO edition is launched to generate even more money.
