I don't think it's obvious. In terms of player count (which is how I would personally rank success), it is not the most successful by a long way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-played_video_game...

However, games like PUBG and Fortnite are free-to-play (PUBG is only free on mobile?) so in terms of actual sales, you could say GTA is more successful. Still not sure I'd class it as an "online shooter", though.

GTA is many things for many different people. For some people, it's a racing game, for others it is about socializing and modding cars, for some it's a dogfighting game, some spend thousands of hours grinding the same set of PvE missions (for some reason), and for many it's a third and first person shooter / warzone simulator.

I totally agree, the same way many games are. But in the context of saying "x is by far most successful y on the planet" I think we have to stop somewhere. Otherwise an open game like GTA V becomes the most successful game (in terms of copies sold) in pretty much every category you can't reasonably stick Minecraft in. I don't think there's much value in that.

Its the second best selling game of all time[1], and because Minecraft doesn't have guns, I suppose that would qualify it as the most successful online shooter (even if I think another genre would be more applicable).

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_gam...

Well but that's a bit like saying that since there are technically races in GTA it's also the most successful racing game. It will also be the most successful flying game and the most successful sailing simulator....etc etc.

I don't know, even though there is shooting in GTA I don't think I'd call it a shooter.

I agree that there is probably some other genre that would describe it better, but I think it wouldn't be unfair by any means to describe GTA as a third-person shooter.

That list is incomplete. CSGO is the most played game on Steam and is now free to play. I would not be surprised in the slightest if more people have CSGO.

interesting. Steamspy no longer works, but its last report in 2016 said it had 25 million sales (at the time it was roughly on par with minecraft sales). Since then, the concurrent player count has more than doubled, but its very difficult to get information about sales.

Wikipedia has it with 46 million owners on Steam, with the following footnote:

> Not official; the numbers were estimated following a Steam API data leak in July 2018, which gave player ownership estimates for games on the platform that have achievements.