In the past two weeks, you will no doubt have seen groups of players causing chaos. The basic premise of war is that those who wear green alien costumes are agents of anarchy, attack players at random and are limited by a single "moral code": unarmed. Those who wear purple alien costumes are trying to stop the greens, acting as a kind of vigilant army that protects other players. In a few days, these missions became blurred, and it is now only a case of green against purple in a strange echo of the territorial war that raged between the GTA families and Ballas.With the war dominating GTA Online, from lobbies to subreddit, players have declared a final battle. On May 15 at 8 p.m. ET, the war will end with a colossal confrontation at Los Santos International Airport, then things can return to normal. At least as normal as GTA Online can be the result of this community-changing event.
This is the end point of the history of extraterrestrial gang wars. But what about the beginning? Well, it all depends on Adam Long. On April 15, Long released a video for Reddit
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"The idea originally came when I saw an article on r / gtaonline about two weeks before I published the alien video," says Long. "The video was of a guy walking on Vespucci channels when suddenly these two vans full of players stop and chase him before hitting him." Long intended to recreate the video with his friends, planning to do it disguised as "Southerners". But one of his team came out of the clothing store in a green alien costume, and so the gang of green aliens was born.
"Our country is blocked, so we are constantly looking for new things to do in many different games," said Long, explaining why he and his friends made the joke in the game.
The blockade is one of the reasons for the spread of alien gang wars, almost everyone I have talked to about the phenomenon is of school age and is now forced to stay at home, but social media has provided more. fuel for fire. "It's even more fun to see all the Reddit, TikTok and YouTube community posts come together and have so much fun in these crazy times," says Long.
The rules of gang warfare require that you only use melee weapons. You can catch a free baseball bat by playing the El Burro Heists mission, which features numerous enemies wielding bats. The mission can be launched from the Play Jobs menu in the Rockstar Created section.
With all the necessary tools, you just need to go out into the world and cause chaos. If you're having trouble finding aliens to play with, joining a subroutine like r / intergalactics or r / GreenVSPurple can introduce many players to you.
TikTok has been a surprisingly strong arm of the alien gang war movement. The correct clip from GTA Online published on the micro-video social network can lead to a huge increase in the number of followers and lead to viral memes. TikTok's content creator Zhi Ko, known online as Nekoztek, quickly saw the potential to support this new phenomenon. Even though he had never made Grand Theft Auto videos before, he started posting updates on alien gang wars. The number of his disciples jumped.
"All of a sudden, all of my notifications are kids who text me asking me" hey can you play with me? "" He says, although he is not an already established GTA personality."When I started my TikTok, it was mostly general facts and technology," says Ko, who works in the blockchain industry. "I was not going to be organized around games or specifically GTA. I try not to publish only GTA videos, but it is very difficult when all these kids ask for all this and I want to I’m trying to produce at least a minimum of four or five TikToks a day, now my friend tells me that I should start producing ten! ”
The community behind the war growing at an exponential rate, I needed a home. Intergalactic, created by Florent Gradit-Perier, is one of the two main sub-marriages dedicated to alien gang wars. When Gradit-Perier, known on Reddit as FloFlan, created the Submarriage and its Discord server and associated teams in the game, the green against purple war element had not yet broken out. . The madness was simply anarchy on the streets of Los Santos.
"I created Intergalactics Inc because I wanted to bring all the aliens together to be more coordinated and make war more fun," says Gradit-Perier. "It was not a purple war against green, but just aliens jumping on poor random players."
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Even now, with the green and purple gangs firmly established in the community, as well as many prominent factions, including the Men in Black and the Republican Space Rangers, it is difficult to see any real hierarchical organization. But Gradit-Perier points to its sub-credit as proof that people work together in their own way. "I saw a few clips in our Subreddit with 15 foreigners on a busor just relax on the street, "he says." We are both unified and chaotic, but in a good way, happy chaos! "
Along with r / intergalactic is r / GreenVSPurple, configured by the Reddit user tapwaterbread. Although the subreddit also aims to bring together extraterrestrial players, it has an interesting secondary objective: "It also allowed the main subeddit to be less flooded with extraterrestrial content," says tapwaterbread.
As expected, not all GTA Online players enjoy extraterrestrial warfare. Their usual home has been turned into a ganking arena, and it may seem impossible to escape. And that's why, explains Ko, the final battle has been declared.
"This final battle came from Reddit," he says. "They were talking about how the main GTA game was ruined, and this war had to end. It came to a point where you can't even access GTA anymore without seeing a hundred aliens kill you every five seconds . "While those who want GTA Online to return to normal are probably waiting cautiously for the end of the final battle, for the warriors of alien gang warfare, the confrontation will become the bright star of some of the funniest moments in the game. "It made GTA 5 a lot more fun for me and my friends," said Lui, creator of the official Purple Gang Discord server. "It's really easy to make friends and play with them here and find greens."
"I think the alien war has made GTA Online a lot more fun and has brought many veteran players into the game," said Tapwaterbread. "With everything going on in our world and we are trapped at home most of the day, the alien war has definitely made my quarantine more enjoyable."
Ko points out how important viral war videos and TikToks can be for single people caught in the stop. "Imagine being a child who can't even go to his friends because of his forties, and suddenly you have a thousand people who want to play with you because of your clips."
As the final battle is fast approaching, this new community is already planning how it will adapt to life on the other side of the confrontation at Los Santos International Airport. "We have car meetings every other day and sometimes gang meetings to keep us all together," says Lui. And Purple Gang's official discord is not the only group to adopt non-foreign activities to do with new allies; The servers I have visited are already planning name changes to reflect their new identities in peacetime.Of course, some supporters of the war hope that this fight is not the last of its kind. "I hope Rockstar will do something similar in the future," said Lui.
Ko also thinks that Rockstar would be wise to pay attention to the phenomenon. "I'm curious to know how the game will evolve from here," he says. What future conflict will result? How will Rockstar adapt to this? He points out that he would like to see an official extension of the "Gangs" DLC for GTA Online.
Rockstar is watching of course. On May 7, the developer manufactured the alien costumes, which typically cost $ 358,000 in cash to purchase, free for all players. And as weapons are prohibited by the code of war, this means that there is no longer any cost involved for anything required to participate. You just need to get dressed, hijack a car and you are part of something huge.
At a time when the world feels more isolated than ever, being part of something unifying may be more important than ever. The fact that GTA Online players created this alien gang warfare, without the input of Rockstar, only makes it even more impressive and exhilarating. The in-game concerts can distract overnight, but swearing allegiance to a gang? Well, it’s for life. Or at least until May 15.
Matt Purslow is the UK news and entertainment writer for Heaven32, and sometimes front-line reporter for Los Santos. You can follow him on Twitter.