How crossplay works (or rather, doesn't) in GTA 5 Enhanced

How to start The Contract in GTA Online — (Image credit: Rockstar Games)

If you're looking to play GTA Online with a friend on another platform, bad news: It's pretty much impossible.

That seems absurd in 2025, huh? Rockstar Games launched Grand Theft Auto 5 Enhanced in early 2025, upgrading the 10-year-old PC version of the game with some improvements that current-gen console players got a little while ago. Those updates include changes to both GTA 5's story mode and GTA Online, which we broke them down in detail in our guide to GTA 5 Enhanced's changes. While the new cars, wildlife system, and technical upgrades like ray-tracing are nice for the singleplayer campaign, Rockstar's bigger priority is clearly keeping GTA Online spry, relevant, and raking in millions of dollars per month as it has been for the last decade.

There's really no GTA Online crossplay between PC and consoles?

There really is no GTA Online crossplay between PC and consoles.

There's also no GTA Online crossplay between different console fiefdoms: PlayStation players can't play with Xbox players.

Why didn't Rockstar implement crossplay into GTA Online with the Enhanced update?

The studio hasn't said, but we can guess that there are a bunch of intertwining reasons that would make it a huge amount of work to incorporate. This game is built on more than decade-old technology, and Rockstar may also be concerned about cheaters from the PC version wreacking havoc among console players, too, were the pools to merge.

But the lack of crosssplay really is a shame. PlayStation 5 players can't even play with PS4 players, because with the arrival of GTA 5 Enhanced, those are now two different versions of the game.

There's no crossplay between GTA 5 Enhanced and GTA 5 Legacy, either

GTA 5 Enhanced is the only version of the game now sold on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series, but PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC players still have access to the older version of the game, which has now been renamed GTA 5 Legacy. (It's also playable on the new consoles via backwards compatibility).

You can still play GTA 5 Legacy online, but not with anyone playing GTA 5 Enhanced.

Here's the breakdown from Rockstar:

"Support for the previous version of GTA 5 will continue, allowing anyone whose hardware does not currently meet the minimum requirements of the new upgrade to keep playing... Please note that to maintain this support, the original version of GTA Online on PC will be a separate instance, and players who remain on that version will not be able to play in sessions together with those on the upgraded version. PC Players who want to play with each other will need to ensure they’re playing the same version of the game. Both versions will be available to everyone who upgrades — and first-time purchasers will get access to both versions as well."

Whether you're trying to play across platforms or game versions, you're out of luck.

Okay, there is one way to play GTA 5 crossplay, but it's really convoluted

GTA 5 characters — (Image credit: Rockstar Games)

As covered by GamesRadar+, there is a "loophole" that makes it possible to play GTA Online across platforms as long as you have "a jailbroken PS4 and a dev copy of GTA 5" and also are playing on the private server Los Santos Online, which charges a monthly or lifetime fee to join.

That's probably not what you have in mind. Sorry.

Will GTA 6 have crossplay?

Rockstar hasn't said, but we sure hope so.

But don't get your hopes up: Red Dead Online doesn't support crossplay, either, despite being a much younger game than GTA 5.

Assume GTA 6 won't have crossplay, and maybe, just maybe, you'll be pleasantly surprised.

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Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.

When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).

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