GTA Online players are usually happy when Rockstar rolls out a new update, but the latest San Andreas Mercenaries expansion has instead made them upset after removing more than 180 vehicles from the game.
As reported by Kotaku, Rockstar removed at least 189 cars and bikes from GTA Online and, making matters worse, put some of them behind its $6-a-month GTA+ subscription, which is currently only available to PS5 and Xbox Series players.
Though the developer warned “many lesser-used vehicles” would be removed from the game ahead of the expansion launching, many players assumed just a handful of old cars would be pulled. Instead, Rockstar removed nearly 200 vehicles, including some previously free to acquire, and put some of them behind a paywall.
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“They said lesser vehicles and removed f**king everything,” commented one frustrated Reddit user on a post outlining every removed vehicle. “They really ruined this update already with that stupid s**t,” said another.
Rockstar said it removed the vehicles to “streamline the shopping experience” but one user, who claimed to have been playing GTA 5 since it launched in 2013, said this was never an issue in the game.
“If there’s one thing I have never heard anyone say since 2013 is there are too many cars available to buy,” they said. “I’ve never once heard that. Not once.”
The list of frustrated users goes on. “This is f**king robbery,” said another. “Holy s**t, the lesser used term was a gigantic lie. Everyone thought it was gonna be the NPC vehicle or really, really old ones. This is disgusting trying to create fake rarity like that.”
Rockstar is yet to address the fan outcry but IGN has reached out to the developer for comment.
The removal of so many cars seems a little ironic given one of GTA Online’s previous major updates finally added the long-requested 50 car garage. Rockstar continues to update the game regularly despite it being available for 10 years already, though Grand Theft Auto 6 (which could launch as early as next year) may change that.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
