Hello everyone!

Winter is just around the corner, and so is the Holiday Season. Would it not be great if you could start them with a fresh "A Year in Recap" post to read, just like the usual?

And surprise, surprise - we have you covered! We have prepared a brief summary of the past year with all the important stuff that happened in 2023 from an MTA fan's perspective. And there is more than just that, so be sure to read the entire post!




There were a few important highlights for us this year.

• Early this year, we have restructured our Moderation team a bit by adding Specializations divisions (such as: Management, Tech and Infrastructure, Social Media). The aim of this was to put extra talents of our Moderators to a better use.
  
  
• At the very beginning of the year, we had unbanned (almost) everyone[forum.multitheftauto.com] who had ever received a *global* MTA ban. A risky move, you might have thought? As it turned out, we were actually quite pleased in how it fared in the end.
  
  
• Next, we had celebrated Multi Theft Auto's 20th Anniversary on 9th of February. Aside from the lengthy feature post with some media, many of our community members also shared their memories with MTA in the celebratory forum post[forum.multitheftauto.com]. You all are also welcome to chip in and post your experiences there[forum.multitheftauto.com].
  
  
• Few days after that, I interviewed IJs - Multi Theft Auto's founder - about his experiences with the project. Feel free to check it out if you have not done so already, as it also featured screenshots from our other projects.
  
  
• One day in April, we had encountered minor disturbances with our perception, but all is fine now. Yllufepoh...
  
  
• Later on, we had opened a beta testing phase for our next major release[forum.multitheftauto.com]. After the testing was over, we had released Multi Theft Auto: San Andreas 1.6 in June. This is still our current stable release, which works best on Windows 10 and Windows 11 operating systems.
  
  
• It is not just us who had their anniversaries - SAES, a long-time MTA clan/gang were also celebrating the 20th Anniversary of their community[forum.multitheftauto.com]. We are happy to see such long-time communities that have been around for almost as long as MTA itself, and we will be always looking forward to give them the spotlight.
  
  
• This year had also seen some developments regarding the next game in the Grand Theft Auto series. Rockstar Games was celebrating the 25th anniversary of the creation of their studio[www.rockstargames.com], for which they published the first trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI in December. The game is planned to launch in 2025 on PlayStation and XBox platforms. The PC version was not announced at this time, but it is possible that it will come out some time after console releases as usual.
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdBZY2fkU-0
  
  
• We also had some developments of our own. We had improved the Discord integration with MTA:SA client[discord.com] - this was made available for testing in our nightly builds. And recently, we have started featuring your media on our social media outlets, as a part of our Community Spotlights program. Want to be featured too? See one of the announcements on our Discord[discord.com].

MTA SA: The Horror Game - by TEDERIs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzxY5jT32b0

MTA | DRIFT MASTERS GRAND PRIX | HANDLING - by Ahmkralq
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fKWRZbLeuA

Multi Theft Auto Showcase | Car Shop - by ianny
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkPXYGwo_zY

Nebla - Mausoleum of King Deshret - by Nakvie Records, map by Nebla
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rke-m50kV8A

MTA SA: Simple AI & Pathfinding - by TEDERIs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QdN8mQOP5w

Junky ft. Roxx ft. Nebla - Synthetic Life - by Nakvie Records, map by Junky, Roxx & Nebla
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltlD10Gedgs





The numbers are lower than in the last year, but there are still many MTA players out there. According to Steam Statistics, the number of players is more or less similar to games like PayDay 2, ARK: Survival Evolved or Garry's Mod.



Also as of 23rd of December, 2023:

• 76,250 members have joined our Discord server[discord.com],
  
• we have got 13,826 followers on X/Twitter,
  
• 58k users follow our Facebook fanpage[www.facebook.com],
  
• and our Steam Community group has 43,115 members.

Not much to report at the moment. Projects like ours depend on the volunteer work and community contributions, so things can get slower at times. We are always looking for new staff members for the project, be it developers, moderators, content creators or managers. If you would like to contribute or test your skills, feel free to reach out to us on our Discord[discord.com] or via forum PMs.
We have a bunch of things kept on our backlogs too, so we might consider re-visiting them in the upcoming year.



We hope that you all will enjoy the Holiday Season and wish you all the best in 2024!

-- MTA Team

Credits for the content submissions: Dutchman101, Haxardous, Nebla, xLive.

(you can find the original post here: https://forum.multitheftauto.com/topic/142514-2023-a-year-in-recap-and-season-greetings/?do=findComment&comment=1025437 )