Take Two cancels plans to stop printing money via Grand Theft Auto Online

Take Two’s “better-than-expected” Q1 2018 driven primarily by paid GTA Online DLC.

When will Grand Theft Auto Online stop operating? The series' developers at Rockstar and its corporate parents at Take Two have hinted at an eventual cancellation, but we've finally gotten official word that the wildly popular online game's updates were going to be canceled... until plans changed.

In a note tucked into a very successful-sounding report for its first 2018 fiscal quarter, Take Two confirmed that the company will "extend the life" of both Grand Theft Auto V and its GTA Online mode—which implies that its lifespan had been finite. Neither Wednesday's quarterly report nor any other official Rockstar or Take Two announcements, including the past year of Take Two financial disclosures, spelled out a timeline for the GTA Online product, which continues to receive content updates for both its free and paid content.

Take Two's Q1 2018 financial report saw year-over-year net revenue grow by a whopping 31 percent, to the tune of $418.2 million. That jump largely came in the form of "digitally delivered net revenue," which grew 56 percent. Do the math, and you'll see a year-over-year net revenue jump of $106.8 million and a digitally delivered net revenue jump of $96.1 million. (This comes, by the way, in a quarter where Take Two's subsidiaries did not release a single new game SKU.) Take Two did not clarify exactly how those purchases are split between retail-game purchases via online retailers, and add-on or DLC purchases within a game's internal storefront, but it did indicate that GTA Online purchases led the charge for the publisher's revenue jump.
Take Two's GAAP net revenue and net profit forecasts for the entire 2018 fiscal year shrank as a result of this quarter's report (down roughly $300,000 and $400,000, respectively). Those results owe to "higher expected internal royalties driven by the strong performance of Grand Theft Auto V and Grand Theft Auto Online."

Though Rockstar and Take Two have not disclosed many details on exactly how their long-awaited Red Dead Redemption 2 will play out, coming in "Spring 2018," financial reports like this could prove to be telling. Take Two can't stop printing money via GTA Online's microtransactions, and it's hard to imagine RDR2 launching without similar online-revenue aspirations.