[MisterBastahrd]

Yes, but this is GTA V we're talking about. Games like this aren't simply games, they're virtualized social platforms. There are many people who have spent thousands of dollars on that game to upgrade their in-game cars, apartments, businesses, clothing, and weapons. It's also one of the reasons that it is increasingly difficult to come up with an MMO (and GTA V is basically just an MMO with cars and guns instead of horses and sword) with any sort of staying power: your competition is not only much better funded than you likely will ever be, but they have years of content that new players can play through. The long-term players are heavily invested in both time and money and the new players aren't going to run out of content any time soon.

Rockstar makes about $600M annually off of Red Dead Redemption and GTA V. They basically gave him 9 minutes of their net revenue.