Rockstar have stayed mum on GTA 6 multiplayer, but they might be hedging their bets with a new GTA Online heist that boasts a "unique new level of replayability"

Nick some paintings from July 14th

Multiplayer crime sandbox and massive money sink GTA Online is getting its first new heist mission in a little while next week, with balaclavas set to be donned on July 14th. The target of this shady op's is the art gallery dubbed the Kortz Center, which you might remember as the setting for that one Merryweather-battling mission with Michael and Trevor in GTA 5's main story.

Rockstar recently locked in that release date for the heist via a newswire post, which delves into a bit detail as to what to expect from this round of stealy thingy to buy overly expensive wheely. Ah, but first, you'll need to already own one of the mansions added to the game late last year. Why are you committing petty theft if you're already rich enough to live in a mansion and can afford to add a whole art studio with resident counterfeiter to it just to be able to do this heist? That's GTA Online is my best answer.

With all that sorted, it's the usual routine of you doing setup jobs solo or with a crew, then gathering a gang to pull off the finale. Once you're at that stage, Rockstar sound like they've made the stealing itself a bit more open-ended than usual.

"The Kortz Center also contains an abundance of fine art that can be stolen as secondary targets, and these stack up quickly — making this newest Heist a most fiscally enriching score. Scoping can be beneficial to identifying these treasures as well as discovering multiple viable escape routes," they wrote. "Covering your tracks and being covert will be crucial for a maximum take, since art known to be stolen will be harder to fence, commanding lower prices on the secondary market. Ensuring no witnesses and wiping CCTV footage will keep the heat off you and your take higher." There's also a choice as to which artworks from your take you sell on for profit, and which you keep to decorate your mansion.

All of that clearly wasn't enough to demonstrate that Rockstar are keen for people to run through this heist more than once. "Every week that initial sale will garner the most robust payout, but with the option to keep stolen Primary Target paintings and decorate your Mansion, along with three new paintings to steal each week and tons of variability in how you approach them, The Kortz Center Heist offers a unique new level of replayability," they added.

It could mean nothing, but that extra emphasis on making this heist something that can keep players occupied for a while has me thinking about GTA 6. Rockstar throttling back on GTA Online around the launch of their next entry's a given, but with nothing confirmed by the studio as of yet with regards to whether GTA 6'll be getting an all new multiplayer arm to replace the exisiting GTA Online, or if the latter will just continue on at least for the short term, this strikes me as Rockstar potentially hedging their bets. If GTA 6 comes out on console and sells in the wildly gangbusters fashion the moneymen hope it will, then maybe it makes perfect sense to jump into adding an online element to it right away.

If that's the case, perhaps this heist's gotten folks back into the habit of playing Online regularly, rather than sporadically. On the other hand, GTA 6 struggles out of the gate for whatever reason or Rockstar prefer to hold off on trying to pull every last GTA Online player across until it hits PC, this heist deliberately having a long tail could help facilitate that without as drastic a drop in activity in the old fiefdom.

For now, I'd imagine the Kortz Center heist'll likely be the last big GTA thing to hit PC this year. Meanwhile Rockstar continue to fight fired staff in UK court over allegations of union busting.