It's been a long, long time since R Star last released the new Grand Theft Auto canon, "Give Him Love 5" on Xbox 360 and PS3 in September 2013, and a few months later, the indie multiplayer model GTAOL was launched.
After nearly a decade of support, GTAOL is about to leave these aging gaming platforms. R Star plans to officially shut down the xbox 360 and PS3 versions of the server today. The news was announced as early as June, so players should not be surprised.
In addition to shutting down these versions of GTAOL, Rstar will also turn off the Rockstar Games Social Club feature of some other games on these platforms. These include PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of Give Him Love 5, GTAOL, Max Payne 3, and Black Los Angeles leaderboards, multiplayer games, and statistical tracking.
However, the R star indicates that players can still experience the single-player content of these games. And multiplayer games continue to support PS4 and Xbox One versions, and they are working to release the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions of GTAOL next March.
R Star didn't explicitly explain the reason for shutting down the GTAOL Xbox 360 and PS3 version servers, but it's certain that this is related to the decline in the number of players on the old console. After so many years and two new console generations, the vast majority of GTAOL players should have moved to a new console or PC. Continuing to support the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions is undoubtedly a resource drain, and while how much of it costs is debatable, R Star clearly believes that keeping old servers running is no longer profitable.