Rockstar's GTA Online mode has kept Grand Theft Auto 5 selling years after its release, with consistent content updates that add new missions for players to take on with friends. These updates include story content with references to GTA 5's single-player campaign, which can be quite confusing for fans who aren't sure when GTA Online takes place - and the solution to this question isn't a simple one.
GTA Online launched shortly after Grand Theft Auto 5, introducing a multiplayer mode separate from the main story, in which players take on the role of a customized character. Rockstar has continued to see growth in GTA Online years after release, and GTA Online broke records for its biggest week and day in August 2019. The spike in player count followed the launch of the Diamond Resort & Casino update, which added a kind of premium-currency gambling into GTA Online.
The Casino update - and two other updates before it - also introduced story elements that seemed to contradict previous information about GTA Online's place in the GTA 5 timeline. Here's when all of GTA Online takes place in relation to GTA 5's story.
When Does GTA Online Take Place?
Before GTA Online released, Rockstar announced that it would be a prequel, taking place before GTA 5's story (set in 2013). Elements of GTA Online's story confirmed this, such as the presence of private military company Merryweather Security Consulting, which was barred from operating in America at the end of GTA 5's story campaign. Inconsistencies still existed, however. For example, the in-game movie Meltdown is viewable in GTA Online, despite being produced by protagonist Michael during the events of GTA 5, and certain in-game internet pages reference GTA 5's campaign.
More inconsistencies added in subsequent updates suggested Rockstar was slowly shifting GTA Online's story into the future, which was finally confirmed in GTA's 2017 Gunrunning update. In the update's Mole Hunt mission, an NPC named Agent 17 tells the player character directly that, at the time of the mission, it is 2017. This means GTA Online is both a prequel and a sequel, depending on the mission being played. It's unclear if the updates between GTA Online's launch and Gunrunning were meant to convey similar time jumps, or if all prior updates took place in the original, pre-GTA 5 era.
Interestingly, this time jump also seems to have confirmed which GTA 5 ending is canon. In GTA Online: Smuggler's Run, the expansion that followed Gunrunners, NPC dialogue confirms GTA 5 protagonist Trevor is still alive, indicating either ending B or C happened. Then, in the Casino update, more dialogue references an event that only occurs if ending C is chosen, suggesting that's the true conclusion to GTA 5's campaign. Still, that makes Merryweather Security's continued presence a contradiction, and other inconsistencies abound, like NPCs that died in 2013 but were still accessible in GTA Online's post-GTA 5 content. Perhaps GTA Online never really happened at all, and is instead just a sort of non-canonical "fan fiction" set in the GTA 5 universe.
GTA Online released on October 1, 2013, for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, on November 18, 2014, for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and on April 14, 2015, for PC.