Rockstar Newswire

Update: The event has ended, but Triple XP is on all weekend long. Enjoy!

We're kicking off our winter slate of Social Club Multiplayer Events Friday December 7th with a Red Dead Redemption Triple XP throwdown across both platforms. Join us in Free Roam on the Red Dead multiplayer frontier at 4pm EST / 9pm GMT with your favorite mount as we'll be playing through all of the game's mutliplayer modes including a few rounds of Undead Overrun from the Undead Nightmare expansion. We'll be online until 7pm EST / 12am GMT, but the Triple XP will be live all weekend long, even after the event comes to its conclusion.

OFFICIAL ROCKSTAR IDs

• RedDeadDev3 (Xbox 360)
• RedDeadDev4 (PS3)
• RedDeadDev5 (Xbox 360 on Twitch)
• RedDeadDev6 (PS3)

HOW TO FIND US
We'll invite some players during the event, but please keep in mind that we might not necessarily be able to get you in right at the beginning. Lot of players often attempt to send over friend requests and messages simultaneously, and we try to give priority to those asking in a respectful manner via chat or in comments... please don't spam!

To get started, select Multiplayer from the main menu, and choose Normal from the list of difficulties. We'll hop into some Hardcore matches during the day for sure, but we generally like to get started with Normal difficulty.

ADDITIONAL TIPS

• Want to earn Triple XP, and fast? First lead your posse to Warthington's Ranch, then head to Pike's Basin, a Gang Hideout between Armadillo and MacFarlane's Ranch. Have a look at the in-game map, as both locations are marked in big letters. We recommend doing this with three or more players in a posse. Twin Rocks is another possibility, located northwest of Armadillo, but it doesn't reward as much XP as Pike's Basin does.
• If you're having issues finding us or getting an invite, watch one of the video streams. Take note of the mode we're playing, and you might be able to join us by selecting that same mode in your game.
• Submit your Gamertag or ID once in the comments section for this article about an hour before the multiplayer event begins. Let us know whether you're on PS3 or Xbox 360, and we'll be able to get you on our list and invited to the next available game.

Feel free to drop your own tips in the comments below in advance of Friday's festivities...

Previously:
Recap, Video & Screens from the Red Dead Redemption Social Club Multiplayer Event on September 13
Recapping the July 27th Red Dead Redemption PSN Social Club Multiplayer Event
Red Dead Redemption PSN Social Club Multiplayer Event Recap Featuring Contest Winners and Fan Videos

Update: The event had ended. Thanks to everyone that joined in to watch, play, chat and to enter to win prizes.

Play Grand Theft Auto IV multiplayer, enter to win cool prizes, watch Rockstar play the game and chat with other Social Club members Thursday November 29th from 4-7pm EST / 9pm-12am GMT. We'll be playing both GTAIV and Episodes from Liberty City on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360, switching to The Lost and Damned for the middle hour and finishing with The Ballad of Gay Tony for the finale.

Five nifty prize packs will be given away. Each one includes a Rockstar Machine Tee, GTAIV license plate, a bonus Max Payne 3 t-shirt and a bunch of stickers. All you need to do to enter is give us some information so we know, should you win, where to send the package. All the details stay with us. We don't give them out to anyone that's going to spam you with emails or whatever.

If you want to go in fully prepped and ready to go, we recommend doing the following:

• Head in-game before things begin Thursday to prepare your multiplayer avatar's look. Gotta look sharp for the video streams on the Social Club multiplayer event page and Twitch.
• Be sure to hit up your friends ahead of time so you can get together in Party Mode to strategize for Team Deathmatch. Rallying points, places to avoid, body armor spots, etc.
• Take a few practice runs at the tracks in GTA Race so you're solid on the shortcuts and weapon pickups.
• Enter a few Deathmatch games to warm up on your shooting and aiming skills. Quick, efficient kills.
• And most importantly, be sure you've got the discs nearby and the games and patches installed. Game installation is optional on 360.

ROCKSTAR DEV ACCOUNTS

• GwRockstar3 (Xbox LIVE)
• PlayRockstar (PSN)
• GwRockstar1 (PC & streamed on our Twitch TV channel)
• GwRockstar4 (Xbox LIVE)
• GwRockstar2 (PC)

Only add one of our devs to your friends list to play. We will clear each account's friend list at the start of the event and accept as many invites as we can. We recommend playing with Social Club members, as getting in a game with a dev is not a guarantee. It is, though, something we attempt to do for everyone each time we host a multiplayer event.

FINDING US IN-GAME
Pay attention to the live chat on the Social Club multiplayer event page. We'll announce where we're at in there. We'll begin in Grand Theft Auto IV in GTA Race, and later progress to The Lost and Damned in the second hour and The Ballad of Gay Tony in the final hour. Use the in-game cellphone to select the mode we're playing during the event.

NEED A PARTNER?
For team-based modes such as Team Deathmatch, gather your friends using Party Mode. You can also hit up the chat during the event or just post your PSN ID/Gamertag in the Comments section below.

ABOUT PARTY MODE
Party Mode is an easy way to get your group together and find matches.  Here are the three quick and easy steps to get you up and running:

• Save your current game. To get started, fire up the in-game mobile phone by pressing "Up" on the d-pad. Select Multiplayer > Party Mode > Yes.
• Next, open up your phone again and select the Friends option to invite at least one person into your Party Mode game.
• Once your team is ready to roll, open up the in-game phone again and select Games > GTA Race.

Announcing the Winter Calendar lineup of official Rockstar Social Club Multiplayer Events with action lined up across Red Dead (including Undead Nightmare and the Complete Edition), Grand Theft Auto IV (including the Episodes modes) and Max Payne 3 (including all the latest and greatest DLC modes). A whole new slate of opportunities to prove your mettle online against your fellow sharpshooters of Social Club, as well as taking on our Rockstar Devs in all of your favorite game modes. The Social Club multiplayer events page will be fired up with a hearth of live streaming action for each event and exclusive prize pack sweepstake gifts - not to mention event leaderboards, live Rockstar-hosted chat and bonus XP de rigueur. Also keep an eye out for chances to unlock new and exclusive Social Club avatar items for your Max Payne 3 Loadouts - we'll of course announce specific details along those lines about unlocks, prizing, special guest players and more in the days leading up to each event. 

Here are the Winter Calendar dates:

• Friday, December 7th
  Red Dead Redemption (including Undead Nightmare)
  PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
  4-7pm EST / 9pm-12am GMT


• Saturday, December 15th
  Max Payne 3
  PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
  11am-2pm EST / 4-7pm GMT


• Friday, January 11th
  Max Payne 3
  PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
  4-7pm EST / 9pm-12am GMT


• Friday, January 25th
  Grand Theft Auto IV & Episodes from Liberty City
  PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
  11am-2pm EST / 4-7pm GMT


• Thursday, February 7th
  Max Payne 3
  PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
  12-3pm EST / 4-7pm GMT
  
  Red Dead Redemption (including Undead Nightmare)
  PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
  4-7pm EST / 9pm-12am GMT
   
• Saturday, February 23rd
  Grand Theft Auto IV & Episodes from Liberty City
  PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
  11am-2pm EST / 4-7pm GMT

Events will always include:

• Chances to Play with/against Rockstar. Some of the very folks who helped create your favorite Rockstar multiplayer games jump online in these sessions to play with fans across Xbox LIVE, PlayStation Network and on PC.
   
• Exclusive Prize Packs. Enter on the day of each event to have your name drawn to win gear in each of the six events - some of these will definitely include chances to score Grand Theft Auto V gear. Prizing also includes official t-shirts and special collectibles such as Rockstar keychains, Red Dead playing cards and GTAIV license plates, as well as Rockstar stickers and more.


• Live Video Streams. Flip between two live high resolution video streams on our events page, each showing the in-game view of a Rockstar dev player. We're also on our Twitch page with another stream, showing the stream of a third Rockstar player. Listen in as Rockstar devs often coordinate over headset to dominate the competition.


• Leaderboards and Unlocks. Participate with us in Max Payne 3 multiplayer during the dates listed above to compete in the leaderboards and for your chance to receive new unlocks. Back in October we gave away some new Max Payne 3 skull masks, and we have a few more we're lining up to give away during the winter.


• Bonus XP. More weeknights and weekends of bonus XP are coming for Red Dead and Max Payne 3.


• Live Chat. We'll have two Rockstar-hosted chatrooms running during the day, the first being on the events page and the second on Twitch.

We're also known to jump online to play completely unscheduled and unannounced, just throwing out an impromptu word via Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Steam (for PC matches) when we feel like a bit of multiplayer mayhem. So do make sure you're following us at any or all of those places to get that word as it happens...
 

One of the earliest Vice stunt videos was Losing Control: Rise of the Stunts. Seminal!

Long before the days of Social Club TV and e-z video editor tools, the O.G.s of the Grand Theft Auto fan community were shocking and awe'ing with amazing homemade compilations of GTA stunt videos - a craze that really kicked off with the addition of motorcycles to the fleet of available transportation in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and all the nutty tricks you could do with them. Pretty slick especially for the time, we've been having fun taking a look back at some of the best ones still available for viewing out there thanks to YouTube - outlandish death-defying (most of the time) vehicle tricks across Vice City with taxis, speedboats, yachts, sportscars and of course lots of two-wheeled action. As part of our celebration of the 10th anniversary of Vice City this season, enjoy a few of these vintage highlight reels...

Vice City: Miss This

Decan's Auto Stunt Reel was one of the very first Vice City stunt videos released, and contains a bunch of stunts that might seem tame by today's standards, but certainly helped to lay the groundwork for Vice City stuntin'. GrinDSouL's Extreme Cabbing is another original from 2003, as was James Gunn's and The Cube's Losing Control: Rise of the Stunts. As an idea of how different things were in making these videos just ten years ago (still a couple years before YouTube launched and before digital cameras were commonplace), we found one by Stoudimaire and Sphinxvc ViceX Stunt Video that was captured and edited together using VHS recordings of PS2 gameplay. Old world craftsmanship!

Vice City Tribute. (Warning: Some story spoilers are shown in this video.)

This might look easy, but give it a try and see if you have what it takes to get up on the billboard using a PCJ-600. No mods!

This Friday's Social Club multiplayer event kicks off an explosive Max Payne 3 TRIPLE XP Weekend. Join us from 4-7pm EDT / 9pm-12am BST across all three platforms (PC, PS3 and Xbox 360) and earn three times the multiplayer XP across all game modes straight on through until Monday morning.

OFFICIAL ROCKSTAR IDs
Participating official in-game Rockstar names will be:

• MaxPayneDev1 (PC)
• MaxPayneDev2 (Xbox 360)
• MaxPayneDev4 (PSN)
• MaxPayneDev3 (PC on Twitch)

COUNTDOWN
If you're unsure of when the event will begin in your time zone, have a look at the countdown on the Social Club multiplayer events page.

HOW TO FIND US
When the event starts up on Friday, enter Max Payne 3 multiplayer and select the Social Club Multiplayer Event playlist. We'll play Free Aim 100% of the time on PC, and a mix of Soft Lock and Free Aim on PSN and Xbox LIVE, so look for the names listed above.

FUTURE PLAYSESSIONS
If you want more time to play our games with us, your best bet is to follow us at our official Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Steam pages so you can get the word when we're going online for some impromptu multiplayer...

Some French GTA fans have been having fun carrying the torch of the Liberty Tree with the publication of an unofficial fan-fiction version at liberty-tree.net.

In our latest look around the world of Rockstar game fansites at large, here's a round up a few quite cool recent bits we've found out there - including a deep analysis of HEALTH's Max Payne 3 original score and soundtrack, some nifty homebrewed Social Club ID cards, and more...

• While we imagine the real Liberty Tree continues to publish Yesterday's News Today dutifully in Liberty City to this day, the last time readers in our own universe could peruse this News Organ was about 11 years ago this month. Thanks to some French GTA fans however, publication has resumed in an unofficial fan-fiction capacity and in the French language over at liberty-tree.net. With stories that date all the way back to 2001, and a newly emboldened editorial staff picking up the pace here in 2012, our kudos to writers Dr Emixam, MisterRed, QTquentin, NelsoN and civic666 who've been reporting on everything from fatal shootings at Maisonette 9 to national interest stories happening across the coast such as the gang troubles plaguing Los Santos and a bloody murder shaking up the small town of Angel Pine.
   
• Longtime Max Payne fansite, PayneReactor.com goes deep, deep, deep into a study of HEALTH's Max Payne 3 original score and soundtrack with some very interesting analysis of how it was created and speculation behind the inspiration and methodology behind some particular pieces. To the author (Cypress) and all others that loved the Max soundtrack, we may release a special Behind the Scenes video to shed some official light on the process that went into the making-of. Also keep an eye out for HEALTH's official music video for "TEARS" coming soon, as the boys continue touring throughout the fall.

• On the heels of our recent official Social Club Friend Compare feature update for Max Payne 3, AJ over at RockstarNexus.com (aka Gamerzworld here at Social Club) has put together an impressive homebrewed Social Club card generator that can display an image of your stats for either Red Dead Redemption or Max Payne 3. As long as you have your profile set to public, you can render out one of these little png images that will show your current stats at that time. The image will even update the stats shown every few hours - pretty cool to be able to proudly display game stats as a message board avatar or on your own website or blog. You can create your own at http://rockstarnexus.com/cards/ - let us know if you guys would be interested in a dynamic version of this and perhaps it's something we'll look to create as an upcoming Social Club feature.
   

Thanks as always to all the Grand Theft Auto, Max Payne and other Rockstar-centric fansites that have shown us so much support over the years. If you've published something interesting or have seen something that you think we should let fans know about in a future roundup, give us a shout at mouthoff@rockstargames.com.

Previously:
Rockstar Fansites Roundup: NightFall Video, Sticker Bombing, GTAIV Machinima, Red Dead in Liberty City Mod & GTA Fan Art

Update: The multiplayer event and Triple XP have ended. Thanks to everyone that joined in on Friday and played over the weekend.

The debut weekend of TRIPLE XP for Max Payne 3 Multiplayer will begin with three hours of live-stream action across PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 in the latest event from the Social Club Multiplayer Events series calendar Friday September 21st from 4-7pm EST / 9pm-12am BST. This event will include three deluxe prize pack giveaways, each featuring a high-powered EVGA NVIDIA® GeForce GTX 660 Ti video card, plus one of the newest Rockstar t-shirts and more...

Join us for an assortment of action on the recently released Hoboken Rooftops map from the FREE Disorganized Crime Pack, as well as plenty of Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and variations of the Event Playlist exclusive Last Man Standing. Additionally, we'll have some Gang Wars outside of the playlist sometime during the afternoon. You'll also be able to track you performance with our event specific leaderboard as the event unfolds on the Social Club multiplayer events page and chat with other Max Payne 3 fans and players around the world as well. Details on how to participate (and who to look for) can be found below:

OFFICIAL ROCKSTAR IDs
Participating official in-game Rockstar names will be:

• MaxPayneDev1 (PC)
• MaxPayneDev2 (Xbox 360)
• MaxPayneDev4 (PSN)
• MaxPayneDev2 (PC on Twitch)

HOW TO FIND US
Enter Max Payne 3 multiplayer and select the Social Club Multiplayer Event playlist. We'll play Free Aim 100% of the time on PC, and a mix of Soft Lock and Free Aim on PSN and Xbox LIVE.

PRIZING DETAILS
Here are some more details on the EVGA NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti video cards we're giving away. Enter on the multiplayer events page, and good luck!

• 2GB GDDR5 Memory
• PCI Express 3.0
• Microsoft® DirectX® 11
• OpenGL 4.2
• NVIDIA GPU Boost
• NVIDIA Adaptive Vertical Sync
• NVIDIA Surround™ Technology
• NVIDIA PhysX® Technology
• NVIDIA 3D Vision®- Ready
• NVIDIA SLI®-Ready
• NVIDIA CUDA® Technology
• Supports Two dual-link DVI connectors, HDMI and Displayport 1.2
• Includes card, driver/software disc, one DVI to VGA adapter, two 6 pin PCI-E power adapters, a user guide and an EVGA Accessory Pack

If you can't join us Friday or want more chances to play with Rockstar (or both!), make sure you follow us at our official Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Steam pages to get the word whenever we're starting up an impromptu multiplayer session...

Update: The event has ended, but Triple XP stays on through the weekend and until Monday morning. Thanks to everyone that joined in for the multiplayer event, whether playing, chatting, watching or just stopping by to enter the sweepstakes.

The new fall calendar of Social Club Multiplayer Events kicks off this week with four days of Triple XP in Red Dead Redemption, beginning with a multiplayer event on Thursday September 13th from 11am-2pm EST / 4-7pm BST on both PSN and Xbox LIVE, just days after our latest bonus XP weekend for Max Payne 3. Triple XP will be active in Red Dead for both consoles from Thursday through the entire weekend, and during the event you'll be able to play with us no matter which version of the game you own (whenever we’re playing a mode that you have), including those with the Undead Nightmare disc.

View all the action via one of our two video streams and chat with other Social Club members on the Social Club multiplayer events page. While there, take about 20 seconds to enter your details for your chance to win one of five deluxe prize packs including a shirt from the new Rockstar tee collection, Red Dead playing cards, Red Dead stickers and some of the new Rockstar stickers. And on top of all that, we'll have a third video stream with another chatroom on our Twitch page. Lots of ways to get in on the action, whether you can or can't join us in-game.

OFFICIAL ROCKSTAR IDs

PLAYING WITH FRIENDS
While waiting to get an invite, we encourage everyone to play with friends. To start the game, invite your friends and form a posse, follow these steps:

1. From the main menu, choose to enter multiplayer, and choose a difficulty.
2. Once in a Free Roam lobby, press the 'Select' or 'Back' button to open the in-game multiplayer menu.
3. Press 'R1' or 'RB' and then the 'Triangle' or 'Y' button to 'Show Friends'. Invite at least one friend into your posse using the 'X' or 'A' button.
4. Once your friends are in the game, press the 'Triangle' or 'Y' button again to return to the 'Players' menu and select them with the 'X' or 'A' button to 'Propose New Posse' or 'Send Posse Invite'.
5. Once you and your friends are ready to go, have fun in Free Roam or head into one of the many multiplayer modes.
6. Alternatively, you can watch the video streams and attempt to follow us into different public modes. Hope to see everyone in-game on Thursday!

If you're looking for even more chances to play multiplayer with us, be sure to check out upcoming events on the calendar, and follow us on our Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Steam pages. We usually hop on at least once or twice a week to play...

Previously:
Recapping the July 27th Red Dead Redemption PSN Social Club Multiplayer Event
Red Dead Redemption PSN Social Club Multiplayer Event Recap Featuring Contest Winners and Fan Videos
Recapping the March 23rd Red Dead Redemption GOTY Xbox LIVE Social Club Multiplayer Event