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Key graphic of GTA 5 compiled of multiple loading screens
Image via Rockstar Games
Category:
GTA

When did GTA 5 come out?

Check out the kind of lives we were living in that year.
Image of Nádia Linhares
Nádia Linhares
|

Published: Nov 10, 2023 01:42 pm

It’s been a long time since Grand Theft Auto 5 (GTA 5) was released. In fact, it’s the longest Rockstar Games has kept fans without a GTA main title.

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For comparison, players waited four years between GTA: San Andreas and GTA 4, and five years between GTA 4 and GTA 5.

Because of its massive success and impact on the game industry and gaming culture, the next GTA installment is one of the most anticipated games of 2024/2025 with the trailer for GTA 6 coming in December 2023.

When was GTA 5 released?

A screenshot of Michael, Trevor, and Franklin looking at a phone in GTA 5
It was the first GTA game you could control more than one protagonist. Image via Rockstar Games

GTA 5 was released on Sept. 17, 2013 on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The game was remastered for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in 2014. A second remaster of GTA 5 was launched in 2022 for Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5.

It’s hard to imagine a game of the same magnitude as the GTA franchise not coming out for PC nowadays, but GTA 5 was only ported for PC in 2015.

It has received 11 awards since it was released, including the Golden Joystick Awards’ and Spike VGX’s Game of the Year. The remaster was even nominated for The Streamer Awards in 2022 for the Stream Game of the Year category, but it didn’t win.

What was happening when GTA 5 came out?

GTA 5 protagonist Trevor holding a rifle on an ATV.
The internet culture was completely different. Image via Rockstar Games

Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop” was number one on Bibllboard’s Hot 100 chart, followed by “Blurred Lines” by Robin Thicke, and “Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons, but we couldn’t run away from Frozen‘s “Let it Go,” since the movie had just come out. Feel old yet?

It was also the Internet’s Harlem Shake era, “What Does the Fox Say” exploded, screaming goats were still a funny meme, Vine was launched at the start of the year, and PewdiePie had made his first appearance in a YouTube Rewind.

We saw Leonardo Dicaprio and Margot Robie do a lot of fake cocaine in The Wolf of Wall Street, the first The Purge movie was released, Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson starred in Her, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe had just entered Phase Two (the first Avengers movie had come out the year before).

Microsoft released Windows 8 in August, Nintendo launched the Nintendo 2DS in October, and PlayStation 4 and Xbox One hit the shelves in November.

Barack Obama was elected for his second presidential term, a meteor exploded over a Russian city, Croatia became a member of the European Union, and Edward Snowden fled the U.S. for leaking information about the U.S. government’s mass surveillance program to the press. It was a busy year, all told.

Other games released in 2013

An image of Ellie from The Last of Us Part 1
The Last of Us Part 1 came out the same year as GTA 5. Image via Naughty Dog

2013 was a great year for the game industry and fans. Here are some of the game titles of 2013, the same year GTA 5 came out:

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Author
Image of Nádia Linhares
Nádia Linhares
Nádia is a Brazilian freelance writer who works for Dot since 2020. She has covered everything from Pokémon to FIFA. Video games are an essential part of her life, especially indie games and RPGs. You can catch her playing Overwatch in her spare time, but she writes better than she aims.