You Can Now Play with Real Money in GTA Online’s Casino

It’s recently hit the headlines that Rockstar Games just announced a brand new feature for their signature game. The controversial improvement is that you can now spend real money in GTA Online’s casino. This idea has divided the GTA-community, so we decided to take a closer look at the issue. 

Both GTA and its online version have a great fanbase all around the world. Though it’s a +18 rated game, it’s well known that it’s quite popular amongst kids. People in online forums are regularly complaining about how parents let their children play with GTA, even though it’s pretty violent, while they’re ruining the adult gamers’ experience. That’s why it’s controversial whether you should be allowed to spend real money in GTA Online’s Casino, which the developers’ brand new feature. 

Spending real money in GTA Online’s Casino won’t make you rich

The thing is, you can now open your purse and spend real money to get yourself some in-game money. Then you can go and spend this money in GTA online’s casino. However, even if you win a bunch of virtual money, it’s not going to make you rich in real life. That’s because you can’t convert GTA’s in-game money back into real money, you can’t withdraw it from the game. 

Once you have in-game money you can only spend it there, in the virtual world. You can buy cars, clothes, houses – but only for your in-game character. Of course, it can be still profitable to gamble in GTA online. Obviously, if you’d like to get your character a shiny new car you can just invest a fiver, gamble in the game, and you may win the price of a Mercedes on a low budget. Or you can just go and nick one – it’s GTA, after all.

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There’s still a big debate on whether this should be allowed

The brand new feature did raise a lot of concerns in the media. For instance, Forbes journalist Erik Kain argues this could be gambling’s gateway-drug for kids around the world. The game is 18+ obviously, but we all know that plenty of GTA players are way below that age. He’s not really convinced by the idea of the whole virtual-money thing either. “The act of betting and winning is the same in a game as it is in real life” – he says. 

“Neither virtual slot machines or loot boxes are exactly the same thing as gambling, but they absolutely tap into the same parts of the brain that gambling taps into. Betting on random odds to win random stuff, whether that’s virtual chips or new cosmetics, is still betting.”

However, we must see the other side of the story as well. Adult people should be given the right to spend their money on whatever they want to, until they cause no harm with that to anyone. We believe the keyword here is “adult”. Gambling is fun until you have full control over it, and it’s definitely not for kids. This new feature sounds amazing for us, but Rockstar Games should put more emphasis on not letting children near GTA – or online gambling.