The most recent installment in the Grand Theft Auto franchise, Grand Theft Auto 5, was released last week to critical and commercial success. In the game, players assume the role of a professional criminal, committing the heists of their favorite movies and TV shows while enjoying a huge open world and multiple protagonists to interact with.
The game’s success is testament to the staying power of the franchise and to publisher Take-Two’s skillful combination of action-adventure and crime elements, which they’ve successfully executed in previous titles in the series.
If you’re looking to explore the world of GTA and need some extra cash, there are a number of ways you can make money online. In this article, we’ll discuss four distinct methods of making money from Grand Theft Auto 5 that you can use to help fund your crimes.
Sell Your Body
For as long as the Grand Theft Auto series has existed, players have looked to capitalize on their heists by selling the items they stole. This aspect of the game was first introduced in GTA IV and has since become a permanent fixture of the series.
In Grand Theft Auto 5, the sex industry has been massively expanded upon, featuring more than a dozen explicit activities that you can engage in with both humans and animals. These include:
- Prostitution
- Live Performance
- Dating
- Romantic Encounters
- Phone Sex
- Explicit Copulation
- Anal Sex
- Masturbation
- Nudism
- Bestiality
- Religious Rituals
- Voyeurism
- Live Streaming
- Video Narrating
While many might see these activities as in some way exploitative, the designers of Grand Theft Auto clearly view them as a reflection of the times we live in and a commentary on the blurred lines between crime and pleasure that characterized the 1950s and early 1960s. The designers of Grand Theft Auto want players to feel empowered by the game, but they also want them to understand the inherent contradictions of their world.
Sell Your Vehicle
Another popular way for gamers to generate extra cash is to sell their vehicles. Grand Theft Auto 5 provides the player with 15 different cars, motorcycles, and trucks that can be modified with different accessories and performance upgrades.
The most popular among these is the Chevrolet Corvette. Thanks to its distinctive, long nose and its ability to accelerate quickly, players can make a good amount of money selling this vehicle. You can even go into GTA’s website and configure the car with a few clicks to generate a quick, easy revenue stream.
For the most part, these vehicles will only generate money if they’re actually used in a heist, which puts the fun of selling them a little bit of a risk. Still, for those that choose to go this route, there are a number of companies willing to pay top dollar for these modified cars, ensuring your investment will be recouped and, likely, more.
Sell Your Roleplay
If you’ve played through the entirety of Grand Theft Auto V and have nothing left to do, you can spend some of your time doing good instead of committing crimes. You can register on GTA’s website and choose to help the police apprehend criminals, earning you credits, money, and fame. In addition, you’ll be able to choose from a variety of jobs, from security guard to fireman. Depending on which one you select, you can earn anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars per month. Not bad for a few hours of work per day.
More and more people are realizing the potential of this route, as evidenced by the growing popularity of in-game real estate opportunities. If you’ve got a talent for sales or trading and want to make quick cash, you can set up shop as an online real estate agent, facilitating home sales for those seeking to purchase a property in GTA. You’ll earn a commission for each successful transaction that comes your way.
Commit Crime
Finally, you can always go back to committing the crimes that got you into this trouble in the first place. Thanks to GTA’s open world structure, which allows players to travel to any place in the game’s massive map, you can always find another way to make money. You just have to decide which option is the most lucrative at this moment in time.
Each option mentioned so far, aside from sex, has been associated with a certain kind of crime. Prostitution and sex work have historically been linked to pimps and other organized crime elements, while vehicle theft and drug dealing have historically been associated with street gangs. The website for Grand Theft Auto encourages players to either go into crime or go home, as none of the above options offer much prosperity. Still, going this route is more lucrative than doing nothing, so it’s worth the risk of being associated with a less-than-honorable profession.
With so much focus on the commercial success of Grand Theft Auto 5, it’s easy to forget about one of its most prominent features: its open world, sprawling metropolis, and unprecedented amounts of freedom in regards to what players can do. For those seeking extra cash, all four of these features offer a seemingly endless number of ways to make money. While it’s always fun to speculate about what might have happened if different decisions were made during the development of Grand Theft Auto 5, the only certain fact is that the game was a resounding success, both critically and commercially, and ushered in a new era for the franchise.