© Rockstar Games via Polygon
A new trend is sweeping TikTok and Instagram, and it comes from an unexpected source. You may have seen people declaring allegiances to purple or green ‘gangs,’ or seen bands of aliens engaging in fistfights and rocket battles. The footage originates from Grand Theft Auto Online, which has suddenly erupted into an all-out war between purple aliens, green aliens, and the terrified remnants of humanity.
Grand Theft Auto Online players are engaging in a war between purple and green aliens in GTA 5. These players are wearing Arena War bodysuits, and are attacking human players, each other, and the. GTA 5 Green and Purple 'Alien Gang War' Is Causing Gamers to Pick a Side Featured in Funny For a game that came out in 2013, GTA 5 has held a large audience of online players for a long time.
The hottest craze amongst GTA Online players is donning a green alien suit, picking up a baseball bat, and riding around with their alien friends in a van looking for people to beat up. In a game where death usually comes from some walloper on a hoverbike raining missiles, it's delightfully silly.
The green and purple alien war is now escalating and going increasingly viral, with players sharing footage of their in-game brawls on social media. “Green vs purple” and “alien gang war” are both popular topics on YouTube and TikTok, and hundreds of thousands of fans are watching clips of aliens brawling in parking lots and hitting each other with sports cars. Players are making TikTok accounts specifically to catalog this alien war, and they’re racking up tens of thousands of followers.
GTA Online is an open-world MMO within Grand Theft Auto 5 that gives players a ton of freedom, including the ability to join clans. Fans also congregate in Discords and Twitter circles in order to plan events, activities, and get-togethers. This, in turn, has led to “roleplay” groups, where fans collectively tell stories in the game by acting out roles in situations like biker gangs, law enforcement, and even presidential elections. One such role-play group dresses up in full-body suits to look like green aliens, and they’ve been at it for a while now, with reports dating back at least a year of them taking over random lobbies and engaging in shenanigans.
But recently, the green alien joke has evolved to encompass in-game rivals who wear the purple variant of the suit, causing the rest of the player base to react and get in on the action. According to a TikTok commentator named nekoztek who follows GTA Online, the entrenched green alien group has 14.2 million players, and the newer purple alien gang has 7.2 million members.
The green aliens started out as — and have remained — agents of chaos, picking a fight with everyone they can. Some purple aliens have positioned themselves as protectors of humanity; others are simply looking to fight back against their green-clad colleagues. It’s utter madness, but it’s amazing to watch from an outside perspective. If you’ve seen people sharing memes about “purple v green,” even without aliens involved, it probably comes from this current gang war.
While the alien wars rage on, GTA Online role-players are also inserting themselves into the action as reporters, loose-cannon cops with nothing to lose, and military experts trying to save their planet from the invasion.
Green Alien Gta
'Aliens' are apparently attacking citizens randomly in San Andreas today. VCN correspondents believe it's a group of anti-Martian extremists protesting today's probe launch to Mars. https://t.co/BZ1KEpGDZH
Green Alien Gta 5
— Vice City News & Public Radio (@VCN_GTA) May 1, 2020Great to be out patrolling in the Vespucci Beach area this afternoon, as the LSPD begin to increase patrols and police presence across Los Santos.
Your safety is the LSPD’s utmost priority.
WE will bring an end to the struggle between these aliens. WE will prevail. pic.twitter.com/euQp6ATNdY
— Detective Mike Vincero (@MichaelVincero) May 1, 2020It seems like this wild war was kicked off by a perfect storm of events — quarantine, the U.S. Department of Defense releasing UFO footage, and an existing movement of green aliens within the game. The end result is chaotic, but also one of the most interesting things to happen in Grand Theft Auto Online in some time. Players who log in should beware; you might find your car hijacked by an extraterrestrial threat. However, it also seems quite easy to get in on the action — just be ready to either defend Earth, or suit up to invade it.
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A bizarre turf war has split the GTA Onlinecommunity in half, and now that it's officially gone viral, Rockstar Games is getting involved — by making it easier for everyone to participate.
Players have been dressing their characters in either green or purple alien morphsuits and riding around Los Santos getting into fistfights or shootouts with gamers repping the other color.
The “Alien Gang War” or “Green vs Purple” showdown has become a social media phenomenon across YouTube, TikTok, and Twitter. It has gained attention from hundreds of thousands of GTA Online fans who have been partaking or watching clips of these extraterrestrial brawls. It has become so popular that Rockstar Games has jumped on board.
GTA Online users can now get Green and Purple Martian Bodysuits for free until May 13, Rockstar announced on Thursday. 'Green and Purple Martian Bodysuits are free in GTA Online all week long,' the official tweet reads. 'Grab yours and join the fight — available from any clothing store by going to Outfits: Arena War > Bodysuits.'
As the tweet says, gamers can pick up their team colors from any of the game’s clothing stores by navigating to the Outfits menu and then selecting Arena War followed by Bodysuits. The company is even throwing in a free Pool Cue that can be claimed from any Ammu-Nation shop to encourage even more chaos.
Green Alien Gta How To Get
Considering that GTA Online’s economy is undergoing some severe inflation, these freebies are quite the deal for anyone who wants to get involved with this viral trend but doesn't want to spend the money they were saving for a car on a bodysuit. Popular Rockstar leaker Yan2295 was pleasantly surprised by the announcement and replied to the company on Twitter.
“It's actually awesome that you guys are acknowledging and taking advantage of this whole thing,” he wrote.
Other players weren’t as stoked, however, specifically the ones who spend hundreds of thousands of in-game dollars for the bodysuits before they became free.
“Are you kidding me, I just bought them for 300k,” tweeted @EnderJon_.
How did all of this insanity get started to begin with?
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What caused the Green vs. Purple War in GTA Online?
GTA Online is a sprawling open-world sandbox where countless players role-play with their friends on specific servers. Polygondug up a video from over a year ago of a group of players dressed in green alien suits raiding other players’ lobbies and wreaking havoc. The gag clearly struck a chord with players looking for some chaotic fun, but it wasn’t until late April and early May when terms like “Alien Gang War” or “Green vs Purple” began picking up steam across social media, along with hashtags for #purplealiengang and #greenaliengang.
A mob of green aliens already existed before people began self-isolating because of the coronavirus pandemic, and the recent release of UFO footage by the U.S. Department of Defense appears to have emboldened the purple team to stand up to the rampaging Green team to kick off this viral GTA sensation.
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Now that anyone can join in for free, you might as well pick a side and join in on the mayhem. Staying neutral more often than not results in you getting whooped by both sides, at least in the chaotic world of GTA Online.