A former Rockstar employee explained why GTA III, Vice City and San Andreas were left without multiplayer
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GTA 2, released in 1999, remained the last numbered game in the series with built-in multiplayer until the release of GTA IV. Why the network mode bypassed the PS2 trilogy, one of its developers told.
According to former Rockstar North technical director Obbe Vermeij, an online mode was in the plans for GTA III, but something went wrong. The specialist was involved in multiplayer programming.
“Since GTA 1 and 2 had multiplayer, we decided that GTA III should have it too. The basic gameplay worked, but there were too many challenges [for the game as a whole], so we canceled [the mode] ," recalls Vermeil.
" Before GTA IV, multiplayer appeared in the portable GTA: Liberty City Stories (2005)
With GTA: Vice City, history repeated itself, and with GTA: San Andeas they decided that there was no point in adding multiplayer to the game at such a late stage in the console life cycle, so they limited themselves to co-op.
Of course, modders corrected this injustice long ago and, despite the venerable age of the games, they still support unofficial online projects. Vermeil is impressed by the efforts of the fans : “It’s great that the community remains so active . ”
Only when it came to the production of GTA IV did Rockstar management allocate enough programmers and level designers to create multiplayer so that the team had time to prepare the mode for release.
Since then, multiplayer has become an integral part of GTA. Still the newest game in the series, Grand Theft Auto V has sold over 200 million copies , but it's its online component, GTA Online , that's making the most money these days.
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