San Andreas might be bursting at the seams when it loads up a heavily modified stunt server filled with custom assets, but 200 (or even 300!) players are having the time of their lives crashing into each other and finding new ways to perform rad tricks. Regardless, it’s hard to find multiplayer modifications as creative as the ones a ragtag team of modders – and literally everyone that wanted to help out – created slowly but steadily. We’re plenty familiar with fan-made modifications going absurdly massive and chaotic – it happens with single-player and online games alike – and San Andreas’ once-massive open world has long been the perfect playground for gamers and developers with too much time on their hands.Īny excuse to dive back into San Andreas, huh?Įven after 15 years or so, SA-MP and MTA are far from being robust experiences these modifications are unstable, network problems are common, and the quality of the overall experience is highly dependent on the servers you choose to play on.

Granted, I was playing during the weekend, but it was amazing to see several free-roam and RP servers filled to the brim with players who refuse to move on to flashier pastures.Īnd it’s easy to see why: there’s an inherent chaos to both SA-MP and MTA which can’t be replicated with an official online Grand Theft Auto experience. To my surprise, the numbers hadn’t changed much since last year’s reports. It's chaos on the streets of Los Santos – but you didn't need us to tell you that.įor research purposes (and because I was feeling a bit nostalgic), I jumped into SA-MP earlier this month. These numbers are especially surprising when we consider GTA Online, Rockstar’s official, triple-A alternative, has been running for nearly a decade now, becoming bigger and deeper with each major content update. As for MTA, the current player count sits around 25k players online on 1,246 public servers at the time of this writing. Somehow, after all these years and against all odds, they’re still going strong and reeling in thousands of players each month – last year, nearly 4,000 SA-MP servers were active, with 25k to 40k players concurrently online on average. Long-time GTA fans may remember – or still play – hugely successful mods such as San Andreas Multiplayer ( SA-MP) and Multi Theft Auto ( MTA).

Gta multiplayer san andreas