After 11 years of GTA Online players brute forcing their way to GTA 5’s starting area, Rockstar Games is opening the gates in a new zombie mode
Zombies are creeping into GTA Online for the very first time in a new mode that sends us back to an under-utilized area from GTA 5’s campaign.
You might remember North Yankton as the snowy old town where GTA 5’s story kicks off as slightly younger versions of Michael and Trevor rob a bank, run away from the law, and ruin their friendship for a good few years. North Yankton makes a very brief appearance in a later mission, but it’s a relatively untapped area in the open-world romp that GTA Online players specifically would need to use a series of glitches to re-enter – until now, that is.
Rockstar Games has announced, via its weekly update patch notes, that we’ll be going back to North Yankton “for a Community Challenge to dispatch marching tides of undead in a new limited-time mode.” Details are light for the currently unnamed mode, but dataminers already found evidence of a wave-based survival mode weeks ago, so expect to duke it out with the walking corpses horde-style. No matter what the mode ends up looking like, at least GTA Online players won’t need to break into the area using brute force (and some exploits) to frolic in the snow.
Rockstar Games might not be unleashing the parasitic plague onto Los Santos’ main map, as it did with Red Dead Redemption’s Undead Nightmare expansion all those years ago, but there are tons of infested mods that already do that for anyone hoping to see a zombie outbreak in the open-world sandbox proper.
The zombie brain-bashing should at least keep us occupied while the long and arduous wait for GTA 6 continues. While Rockstar Games has only ever put a vague 2025 window on the title, one former developer speculated that the studio won’t know if GTA 6 will need to be delayed until next year. He also reckoned that Rockstar Games is in no rush since “there is no competition” and GTA 6 will “sell for 10+ years” if it releases in a good state.