
They take information from the support servers for crew/friends stuff, they also take into account your level, skills, etc and does its best to place you in a session that "averages" the total session playerbase (from newb/low level up to skilled/high level). These servers have multiple parts to them, their role is to choose a session for you, and put you in it.

Now, the important servers are the "Matchmaking" servers.

They instead operate a number of "support" services, this includes things like SocialClub content (license plates, crew emblems, crew membership, etc), next are the "Global" servers, these host things like the loading tiles (text, and graphics) configuration files (eg, tunables.json) and other stuff needed by the game which isn't session specific. With this system, Rockstar don't need to operate expensive and bandwidth intensive game servers, this saves them literally hundreds of thousands (possibly even millions) of dollars a month. Rockstar employ a "meshed session" multiplayer system.

"I see a lot of people talking about "GTA Online Servers" and I would like to clear up some confusion about exactly how GTA Online works, this will better help people to understand how and why things happen in GTA Online the way they do.įirst things first, Rockstar don't host "Servers" in the classic sense people understand, that is "Minecraft Servers" or "Half Life Servers" and so on, meaning your console (and others) do not in fact all join one server hosted by Rockstar and play together on Rockstar's servers.
