GTA Online's grindy new update sends exactly the wrong message ahead of GTA 6

If Rockstar was hoping that its latest GTA Online update would be a way to drum up fresh excitement on the road to GTA 6, it's been sorely mistaken. The arrival of the new Kortz Center Heist sounds great on paper, and it could even act as a testbed for what's to come in the future. However, its payouts, while initially respectable, are severely nerfed for a repeat attempt, within the same week, and the patch has also obliterated the value of heist rewards across several of the multiplayer game's most lucrative missions. The result of that is players questioning who's actually pulling off the master plan here - us, or Rockstar?

Before you can even start the Kortz Center Heist in Grand Theft Auto 5's multiplayer mode, you'll need to spend a cool $4.7 million in GTA dollars to set up an Art Studio in your mansion. That's presuming you already own a mansion, otherwise you'll be looking at another $11.5 million minimum on top of that before you can tackle this new mission. Fortunately, Rockstar notes that "the treasures contained inside the museum's hallowed halls make it one of the most lucrative undertakings throughout Southern San Andreas."

Is that actually true, however? A first completion certainly is, with players reporting a pretty respectable $2 million payout for a successful art theft. Unfortunately, this is largely thanks to a big bonus awarded for your first completion of the week. Repeated attempts will only bring in $400,000 (for a $100,000 setup fee). Rockstar justifies this as your stolen goods "saturating the market and leading to buyer fatigue along with decreased payouts." At least you can choose to keep the artworks for your own displays instead if you want.

Alongside this, Rockstar has also seriously nerfed the potential payouts of many of the most profitable heists in GTA Online. The chart above compares some of the expected rewards based on the loot type you find in the Cayo Perico, Diamond Casino, and Doomsday Heists. Even that doesn't tell the whole story however. Looking at the weighting values in the game files, it appears that less valuable prizes are now more commonly encountered, while the best-paying options are even less likely to show up.

For example, in the Cayo Perico Heist, those valuable Pink Diamonds previously had a 10% chance to show up. It's now down to just 2%. Bearer Bonds drop from 15% to 8%, and the Pearl Necklaces from 15% to 10%. The least worthwhile loot, Tequila, will now be your primary haul in 80% of attempts (up from 60% previously), and it's also had its value cut down pretty significantly from $630,000 down to just $400,000. Ouch.

It all feels rather cruel and unusual. Many of these heists have been in the game for so long now that suddenly and unexpectedly nerfing them is mostly going to hit any returning players who are coming back to check out the new mission. Should you be met with a funding shortage for your Art Studio, you'll now have a much tougher time making up the difference - unless you buy a real-money Shark Card. GTA Online YouTuber 'Tylarius' sums it up with a pretty simple question: "Rockstar, what are you doing? I don't understand this. Why are you being so mean?"

User comments on both the Kortz Center YouTube trailer and Rockstar's announcement post via X are almost universally talking about this extra grind, and any discussion of whether the new heist is a winner has been lost to the ether. "The heist is so good that they had to cut the payout from everything else just to make sure people will play it," one writes, "maybe it's time to move on." Another remarks, "What a way to kill heists, the bread and butter of the game."

I've got a crew that meets once every few months for a GTA Online catchup, and we were loosely trying to figure out when we could all get on to try out the Kortz Center Heist. Now the conversation has become whether we can scrounge the cash together to even afford it - and if the answer is no, I'm seriously questioning whether we'll bother at all. If this is a sign of what we can expect from the GTA 6 multiplayer component, it's rather concerning. If, instead, it's an incentive for people to think about moving on, I suppose it's doing its job.