[2022] A Year in Recap and Season Greetings news - Multi Theft Auto: San Andreas mod for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

Hello everyone!

The holiday season is well under way, so there is one thing left to do before we say goodbye to the year - and that is to check out our "A year in Recap" post!

Like the last time, we have prepared a brief summary of the year for you. We have gathered recollections of some of the most important news and events that happened in 2022 from an MTA fan's perspective. We have also included a couple more things that might be interesting to you, so be sure to read the full post!

This was a more quiet year for us, but otherwise a lot has happened in the GTA community:

• In early February, Rockstar Games have confirmed on their Newswire, that the next game in the GTA series is in development, although without disclosing any other details. The last game in the series - Grand Theft Auto V - was first released in 2013, so it has been quite a wait since then.
  
  
• In April, we have published first server builds for the ARM architecture. Botder has worked hard on this feature, which allows you to run the MTA:SA server on your Raspberry Pi-s or other similar devices without too much hassle. These builds come in many flavours (ARMv7 arm32 & ARMv8 arm64; Windows & Linux) and should work just fine. Your mileage may vary though, as they are still considered to be experimental. If you want to give them a shot, you can find them on the nightly page or the Linux page. Be sure to report any problems you run into - either on our Github or Discord.
  
  
• Staying on the server topic, we have released a small security update for the MTA:SA server in May. This update fixed a vulnerability, that could be exploited to crash the server process.
  
  
• Also in May, a sad news has come, as Ray Liotta, the actor who voiced Tommy Vercetti (the iconic protagonist of GTA: Vice City, who is also present on the MTA:SA's logo and icon) has passed away. He has also starred in several movies, such as an Oscar-winner and all-time classic "Goodfellas", which served as one of the inspirations for Vice City and other GTA titles. Rest in peace, Ray.
  
  
• In, what some have described as the biggest leak in the history of gaming, a bunch of never seen before footage from the next GTA game have been leaked online in September. The videos have confirmed some of the speculations that fans and game journalists had in regards of the game - eg. its possible setting; but also shown some new details - eg. a pair of new protagonists or possible features.
  
  
• Thourough the year, we have been also working on improving our infrastructure and Discord server with various tweaks here and there. While you may not notice these changes at first, they help us provide you the best MTA experience.

[DM] sora v22 - Snowy Mountain - by sora

MTA:SA Easy Hydra Stunts #MTASA - by TNT

* nX_ & hUGAOXD * Mona Lisa Overdrive * - by FFS Gaming / -ffs-Micra | map by nX_ & hUGAOXD

Model 3D Breaking Bad Laboratory For MTA Server ( RockStarMTA ) - by Selective Modeling

MTASA: Skygfx Test - by Nurupo

[MTASA:TACTICS] REALITY - by Obito & Lucas

MTA: Water Puddles & Rain - by XaskeL

Mystery City - NEXCITY - by Nebla

PARANOID | NON-STOP MTA DAYZ [4K RES] - by supraaa

• Recent peak number of concurrent unique players: 34,295 players on 2022.12.23 (at 18.43 GMT)
• Highest recorded number of concurrent unique players: 52,098 players on 2020.04.02 (at 18.00 GMT)
• Recent number of daily unique players: 135,876 players on 2022.12.18 (Sunday)
• Highest recorded number of daily unique players: 185,818 players on 2018.02.03 (Saturday)
• Recent number of monthly unique players: 584,532 players on November, 2022
• Highest recorded number of monthly unique players: 805,903 players on January, 2018

• 1.5.9 - 99.1%
• 1.5.8 - 0.2%
• 1.5.7 - 0.4%
• 1.5.6 (and older) - 0.2%
• 1.4.x + 1.3.x - 0.1%

The numbers are slightly smaller than in the last year, but we are still good on that front.

As of 25th of December, 2022:

• 58,440 members have joined our Discord server - went up from the ~40.000 in the last year
• we have got 13,748 followers on Twitter
• and 59k followers on Facebook
• and our Steam Community group has 29,345 members

And here is the part that we omitted last year, but we actually have things to say this time!

• A while has passed since the last MTA:SA release. Patrik & other developers did some work towards the next one, but it still needs some fine-tuning.
  We are also still looking for the best way to approach it, as we would like this release to be the first one in the 1.6 series and we expect some compatibility-breaking changes to be included in it. We will let you know once we have it sorted.
  
  
• Continuing on the development side of things, one of our community members, Merlin, has been working on cleaning up and refactoring some of the Project's source code. Thank you - clean code is important, so we really appreciate your contributions on that front!
  
  
• Community-wise, it has been a good time for our players. Our AC team led by Dutchman101 have been cracking down on paid cheats. Thanks to their efforts in the recent months, the cheating problem should be now less noticeable than ever.

Last, but not least - we will be celebrating Multi Theft Auto's 20th Anniversary next year.

Yes, you have read it correctly - we have been running the MTA project for two decades now. Many staff and community members have come and gone since then. Some of them still follow the Project, some no longer do. We have made so many releases during that time, and there are also so many memories and stories that go along with them.

Stay tuned for more details about the Anniversary! And for just 20 Claudecoins, you can get yourself an early access to the... nah, we are still keeping it free

Happy holidays and we wish you all the best in 2023!

-- MTA Team

Credits for the content submissions: Dutchman101, Nebla, patrik, -ffs-PLASMA, srslyyyy.