History

Our History

Virtually every online community can trace their roots back to a modest beginning as a small fan-run website; GTANet is no different!

We began as a small GTA III blog in the year 2000, created in anticipation for Rockstar Games’ first 3D open world game of the Grand Theft Auto series. Popularity saw the website spawn into a dedicated domain at GTA3.com. New sites branched out from the website to expand the growing community: GTA3Mods and GTA3Forums. Activity peaked as the launch of GTA III on PC approached, at which time we were receiving around 20 million visitors per month.

GTANet continued to push forward in the development of GTA-related websites, creating a new fansite for news, guides, and other content for all major titles of the GTA series as they released throughout the years, all of which can still be accessed and utilised today. We also hosted a dedicated modding community, which went on to become GTAGarage, a modding database to share creations. The vast amount of dedicated content awarded Administrators at the time, alongside staff from other fansites, game merch and invitations from Rockstar to play unreleased games before they were launched to the public.

The great success and popularity of the GTA3Forums community couldn’t be contained to a single game, and it eventually embraced its own domain to become GTAForums.com. With over 16 million posts and more than 850,000 members (as of 2023), GTANet and GTAForums continue to hold the title of largest and most influential fan-run Grand Theft Auto community on the Internet.

Here and Now

If you’re old enough to have experienced the Internet of the early 2000s, then you know as we get further into the 2020s that the landscape has changed… get arf my lawn!

Content nowadays has (d)evolved, to about 280 characters, with fast-paced and interactive Social Media being favoured in the community in the lead-up to a game launch and especially post-release. We could reminisce about this, but here at GTANet we have chosen to embrace it.

Fansites may seem like relics now, but to us they are a symbol of our community, and that foundation from the past is still solid as a rock, much like our enduring support for the GTA series and Rockstar Games. Our Network sites remain archived, and they are still very much used today in their own capacity.

GTAForums remains at the heart of GTANet, and our dedicated member base continues to flourish. You’ve supported our full coverage of other Rockstar Games titles, which began with the announcement of Red Dead Redemption 2 and the creation of brand new subforums. Out of this we accelerated our presence on the Twittersphere as well and created a sister-site called RedDeadNet for our community to keep up with events. We’ll endeavour to do much more of this in the future, as the need arises.

Going forward, GTANet’s efforts are more focused on our community than ever. We’ve re-vamped this here website to bring you only the most legitimate of news, highlight community creations, and essentially share whatever we want from the world of Rockstar Games.

Welcome home.

The GTA Network

Grand Theft Auto
Modding