Grand Theft Auto V

Money is slow, everything costs millions, and reviewers read the design as pushing players toward Shark Cards. One points out that the Shark Cards "have not changed since THE GAME'S RELEASE" while in-game prices kept rising; another says they are "not even worth buying $100 for a measly 10 million in game currency". Others note that new content needs properties costing tens of millions and that GTA+ put previously available cars behind a subscription. Grind, economy and nerf complaints appear in 18% of all negative reviews, more than any other topic. Positive reviews raise the grind too, as a caveat ("fun with friends but its a grind"). A few link it to cheating, among them a player who "used mod menus because I got bored of having to grind for everything".

The July 14, 2026 update added the Kortz Center art heist, tied to new mansions costing roughly $11.5 to $18 million, and reduced payouts on almost every existing money-maker, with weekly cooldowns that sharply cut repeat runs. Players cite Cayo Perico's tequila and pink diamond falling (with worse odds), and the Diamond Casino, Doomsday, the original heists, Cluckin' Bell, and Dr. Dre and Auto Shop contracts all losing 20 to 40%. Some called the new heist buggy (checkpoints that trip alarms, a getaway helicopter that crashes, laser grids that fight the clunky movement), and a few were angry that it lacks adjustable crew cuts, so the host takes about $2 million while teammates get a few hundred thousand. Reviews mentioning nerfs or payouts are only 14% positive. In the week the update landed, the slice's positive ratio fell to 81% from about 94% in the preceding weeks, and 41% of that week's negative reviews were about the nerfs. Some players with hundreds or thousands of hours edited years-old reviews to protest. The protest was short: sentiment recovered to around 92% in the following weeks, and mentions of the nerfs dropped to a handful a week.

After money, cheating is the Online problem reviewers name most often. Players describe god-mode users, lobby-wide explosions, being caged, teleported or crashed, bots spamming money-drop sites in chat, and, most alarming to them, the peer-to-peer netcode exposing IP addresses and locations. A few say BattlEye reduced cheating for a while before the modders came back, and a few claim Legacy is much worse than Enhanced for this. A couple of reviewers say they were banned after a hacker gave them money, or after reporting one. Some positive reviews mention it in passing ("online is good besides hackers sometimes").

These reviews come from players returning to old accounts, and the stories follow one pattern: a Rockstar account created years ago is tied to an email the player no longer has, or was hijacked; the Steam copy is permanently linked to it; support answers with an automated "we can't confirm it's you" and closes the ticket as resolved; and the player cannot play a game they own, even offline. One reviewer explains at length why buying the game again would not fix it. Some describe filing ticket after ticket. These reviews are almost all negative, and a few authors say they will not buy GTA VI because of it.

The Rockstar Games Launcher is a steady source of negative reviews, a few of them written after less than an hour of play. Complaints include endless "connecting to Rockstar Games Services" screens, activation-code errors on a Steam purchase, forced re-login, offline story mode that stops working with an "Activation Required" error, background processes that keep running after quitting, updates that wiped save files, and having to make an account at all for a single-player game. Some add that troubleshooting ran them past Steam's two-hour refund window.

A smaller but persistent group objects to BattlEye being added to Legacy after the fact. Linux and Steam Deck players are the loudest: story mode runs, but Online is blocked, and they point out that BattlEye's Proton support is a setting Rockstar has chosen not to enable. Others object to installing kernel-level software just to play story mode, call it spyware or a security risk, and note it did not stop cheaters. A few Windows players also report being disconnected by BattlEye without cheating.

Separate from cheating, players complain about legitimate players who hunt newcomers: high-level "barcode-named tryhards", explosive weapons everywhere, and above all the Oppressor Mk II flying bike, which comes up in 49 reviews (one player "gets vaporized by a 12-year-old on a flying broomstick before I can answer"). Most reviews that mention the Oppressor still recommend the game. A smaller group describe racism, misogyny, slurs and harassment in voice and text chat as far worse than in other games.

Players list bugs that survived a decade of updates: the Diamond Casino "mantrap" disconnect, crashes in the vault tunnel, heists that reset challenge progress, sessions that suddenly empty, endless loading into interiors, NPC teammates stalling, and, for at least one reviewer, a story-mode crash at the same point of the final mission. Loading times draw sarcasm ("I love how you get to sit in loading screens"). A few reviewers charge that Rockstar patches glitches that help players make money but leaves the ones that break missions.

A handful of reviews raise: Legacy being unlisted on the Steam store; no cross-play or console-to-PC progress transfer; Online's reliance on peer-to-peer rather than dedicated servers; Australia- and Korea-specific casino restrictions; Steam Cloud saves being disabled; the size of the install; and the unskippable Online tutorial.