Meta has confirmed that the VR remake of Grand Theft Auto San Andreas is “on hold indefinitely” while they work on other things.
The remake of the 2004 game was announced way back in 2021 during a Facebook Connect, where Mark Zuckerberg said it was being developed for the Oculus Quest 2, and it was later described as “a project many years in the making.”
However, after a prolonged period without any news on the project, a user commented on a YouTube trailer for Skydance’s Behemoth inquiring about the remake. Meta replied from its official verified YouTube account, stating “GTA: San Andreas is on hold indefinitely while we both focus on other projects. We look forward to working with our friends at Rockstar in the future.”
Meta has not released any additional information as to the source of the problems.
The parent company of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp has experience recreating games to run on their VR devices, having worked with Capcom to bring a full VR conversion of the original Resident Evil 4 to Meta Quest headsets in 2021. It’s also not Rockstar’s first foray into the VR realm, as they created L.A. Noire: The VR Case Files for a variety of VR platforms.
Fans are confused and disappointed that GTA San Andreas VR has been canceled
Replies to Meta’s comment on the Skydancer’s Behemoth video as well as responses to the story on Reddit and X suggest that fans are disappointed about the game being canceled. “Really sad [sad emoji]” says one YouTube comment.
“Honestly a shame, feel like this would have gotten people I know that don’t have VR to get one….I wonder why it failed,” muses one commenter on Reddit.
Meta says Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas VR has been put "on hold indefinitely.""GTA: San Andreas is on hold indefinitely while we both focus on other projects. We look forward to working with our friends at Rockstar in the future."
byu/SattvaMicione invirtualreality
One insightful comment speculated on the reasons behind the cancelation, saying: “This is basically confirming what a lot of people already heavily speculated. Not surprising, but still unfortunate. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a combination of VR not doing quite well enough to justify the cost as I’m sure a GTA port must be ludicrously expensive, and perhaps difficulties getting it all to perform well on the standalone hardware, especially if they were trying to make this work on the Quest 2. San Andreas is an older game, but compared to a lot of what you see on the Quest the SCOPE of it and the world is staggeringly huge.”
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas remains a fan favorite among the earlier games, causing a huge spike in downloads for Netflix games when the GTA trilogy arrived there in December last year.
Featured image credit: Rockstar Games