GTA Online brings Slashers back to Los Santos for Halloween

Rockstar has turned Los Santos into a month-long haunted house. Slashers are stalking the streets, the undead have taken over Ludendorff Cemetery, and every week of October hands out a fresh costume piece to anybody willing to grind for it. The Halloween Thrills event is live now and runs to the start of November.

The headline addition is the Slasher playlist itself: a round of kill-or-be-killed hide and seek where one player hunts the rest through the dark. Alongside it, Ghosts Exposed sends players after spooky visions of deceased tech executives, the Halloween Featured Series rotates seasonal modes, and Peyote Plants are sprouting across Southern San Andreas for anybody who fancies spending a minute as something that is not a person.

Payouts are the real draw. Every Halloween Survival — including the Alien variants, Cayo Perico and the returning Ludendorff Cemetery Survival, which throws waves of foes and haunted animals at players in a snowbound North Yankton — awards 3X GTA$ and RP throughout the month. Random Transform Races and Hotring chaos in the San Andreas Super Sport Series pay the same.

Weekly challenges stack up to a GTA$2,000,000 bonus

Rockstar is running five themed weekly challenges, each with its own reward, and a GTA$2,000,000 bonus (paid within 72 hours) for clearing the lot. From 1 to 7 October, securing two Bail Office bounties earns the Green Vintage Skull Mask and GTA$100,000. Winning two Adversary modes between 8 and 14 October brings the Pink Skull Emissive Mask and another GTA$100,000, while three race wins from 15 to 21 October unlock the Orange Glow Skeleton Onesie plus GTA$100,000.

The last two weeks get more demanding. Completing every wave of a Survival between 22 and 28 October pays GTA$150,000 and the Gray Space Interloper Outfit, and finishing 10 waves of a Survival without dying from 29 October to 4 November is worth GTA$250,000 and the Slasher Clown Outfit.

Night shifts pay double all month

Quieter money is on offer for players who would rather not be chased. Apprehending Standard and Most Wanted Bail Office targets, or helping Vincent Effenburger clean up the streets in Dispatch Work, earns 2X GTA$ and RP for the whole of October.

Our opinion

Halloween has become the most reliable month in GTA Online's calendar, and this year's version is notable for how little it asks of the player. There is no new heist to learn, no property to buy and no setup fee to swallow: the event layers multipliers and cosmetics onto modes that already exist, which is exactly the right shape for a game that is coasting towards its sequel. Rockstar knows most of its audience is waiting for Grand Theft Auto VI, and a month of doubled payouts is a cheap way of keeping the lights on in Los Santos.

The weekly challenge ladder is the more interesting design choice, because it is one of the few things this game has added recently that rewards consistency over a single long session. Spread across five weeks, it nudges players back on a schedule rather than inviting one enormous grind, and the escalating rewards — masks first, outfits later — give the final fortnight a reason to exist. Whether that is enough to hold attention through a packed autumn release season is a different question, but as seasonal events go, this one is honest about what it is.