GTA City Of Paradise: Real Or A Hoax?

[Update: GTA City of Paradise is fake]

Right off the bat, I'll just tell it like it is: A user on 4Chan came across a meeting that Rockstar had with a Bulgarian-based company called Socialevo Network. They're a marketing firm centered around online and mobile based content engagement and social advertising. The real kicker is that tucked away on Socialevo's site are some files... some very GTA-esque files.

A reader tipped us off to the folder of images and mentioned that the only context was that they were snapped during a meeting between Socialevo and Rockstar. He tried bringing the information to an IGN forum and asked the users to help him “figure out” if the images are attached to something real or if it's an elaborate hoax.

Based on heuristics, this could go either way: Logically, someone working at Socialevo.net could have easily Photoshopped the images and posted them to the company's backend. The sub-folder containing the images, as of the writing of this article, is available on Socialevo's website. There's no reason why we should get any legal notices from someone given that the folder is public and we didn't break any laws clicking on a public link. So really Rockstar, no copyright fines... please?

Working in favor of this potentially being legit is the fact that the meeting supposedly took place on Monday, November 18th , in the middle of the afternoon around 2:35pm. That sort of makes sense.

The fact that the images were uploaded at spaced intervals – with the first image 20 minutes spaced from the rest – does lend itself to more questions than answers.

The next three photos are uploaded within minutes of each other, at 2:54, 2:56 and 2:58. The only thing is, the numbering of the photos seem to indicate that the one taken first is actually the last in the file numbering sequence. So technically, based on the file sequence, the one uploaded last is actually first.

Given the upload times and file sequencing seeming rather odd – not to mention that the main logo of GTA City of Paradise looks Photoshopped to oblivion – it's hard to tell exactly what's going on with the information. The images of Las Vegas also look pretty cheap. However, if this was a concept pitch, realistically a lot of this stuff probably would look cheaply made and tossed together. It wouldn't be until the project management and design phase would we see something a bit more concrete.

If we are to follow the presumption that this is real, one would have to question what is a GTA City of Paradise? And why would someone like Socialevo.net have photos of from this alleged meeting? Technically it could be a marketing strategy being setup for a mobile app of some sort? Could it be a DLC expansion for GTA Online? There's definitely no way that Rockstar is already working on a sixth game when GTA V has yet to launch on PC.

Ultimately, I must say that this information has me stumped. As easy as it is to claim that it's all fake, the fact that it's on a legitimate marketing site lends itself credence that it may not be entirely fake. But again, if it's an employee who frequents 4Chan and wanted to get a rise out of people, this wouldn't be a bad way to do it.

Sadly, I'll chalk this up as a rumor until someone can provide additional information on this stuff.