Four years ago, Rockstar Games released Grand Theft Auto V, and it was a huge hit. Four years later, GTA V still enjoys an enormous following. With a consistent average player count of

55,099 player in the last 30 days and a new DLC called “Smuggler’s Run” that came out August 29.

According to the article “How much money did the world spend on GTA V so far?” by Jessie Peterson: players have spent at least $2,079,480,000 on Grand Theft Auto V since its release. Rockstar reported 52 million individual copy sales as of 2015, which is the most recent data available.

Take-Two Interactive Studios, the company that owns Rockstar Games, posts news releases reports of how much money they make each year. For 2017 they reported “a strong fiscal year.” In the management comments of the report the Chairman and CEO of Take-Two said “During fiscal 2017, we delivered Bookings and cash provided by operating activities that significantly exceeded our original expectations, along with revenue growth and margin expansion. These results were driven by the continued extraordinary performance of Grand Theft Auto V and Grand Theft Auto Online.” However, they give no actual count of how many copies of Grand Theft Auto V were sold in the year of 2017.

Any game that has survived four years in the modern age of gaming, is clearly doing something right. Grand Theft Auto — at the very least — deserves praise for it’s longevity.

However, many current players complain that the system for how to level-up in multiplayer is too grindy. They also dislike how the game basically requires players to spend real money to buy big ticket items like the Megalodon Shark Card, which costs $100 and will give you 8 million in game dollars.

Frustration with the multiplayer functions lead to a large number of hackers, which Rockstar has also had trouble policing and punishing the people who do hack the game. Near the release of the game, glitch abusers were very common, and often took advantage of glitches to get money and give it to other players. However this has since been patched, and is now all but a memory for most players.

Perhaps the greatest achievement of GTA V is that its base mechanics are built so well that its playability has lasted so long. So while, there may be flaws in the multiplayer, there is something that keeps players coming back.

While GTA V has a reputation for being just a way to commit illicit crimes virtually, it’s way more than that. Because the game is based on the open world concept where players can fully customize their experience and can virtually experience a luxurious, yet realistic lifestyle, it keeps players coming back. (But still have the ability to participate in various organized crimes.)

There is something for everyone in the world of GTA. And with every release of downloadable content, the world only continues to grow, giving any kind of player opportunity to live their own little lives in the city of Los Santos, Blaine County, Paleto Bay and all of San Andreas.