Games Like GTA: Open-World Crime Sandboxes Worth Stealing
The best games like GTA — open-world crime sandboxes, city driving games, and the specific freedom of causing chaos in a living city.
Grand Theft Auto V has been one of the best-selling games in history for over a decade, with GTA Online generating billions in revenue. GTA 6 is arriving in 2026 as the most anticipated game in years. Rockstar defined open-world crime sandboxes so thoroughly that "GTA clone" became a genre label applied to any open-world game with cars and guns.
Finding games like GTA means hunting for open-world games with driving, shooting, criminal activities, and the specific satisfaction of existing in a living city that reacts to your chaos.
The direct crime sandbox family
Saints Row (2022 reboot) tried to modernize the formula. Mixed reception but the core loop of criminal empire building in an open city is there. The older Saints Row: The Third Remastered and Saints Row IV are better — especially The Third, which leans into absurdity and becomes its own thing.
Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition is Hong Kong crime drama with martial arts combat. GTA's driving and open world combined with Batman-style melee combat. Underrated and excellent.
Mafia: Definitive Edition is 1930s organized crime with a more linear, story-focused structure. Beautiful, cinematic, less sandbox than GTA.
Watch Dogs 2 is San Francisco open-world with hacking instead of guns as the primary tool. Lighter tone, creative approaches to missions.
The open-world action peers
Red Dead Redemption 2 is Rockstar's other open-world masterpiece. Wild West instead of modern city but the same attention to world detail and player freedom. The rdr2 tips post has more.
Cyberpunk 2077 is Night City's neon-soaked open world. Post-2.0 update it's excellent. Driving, shooting, RPG elements, criminal activities. The cyberpunk 2077 tips post has more.
Just Cause 4 is destruction sandbox. Less story, more "attach rockets to a cow and see what happens." Pure chaos energy.
Far Cry 6 is tropical open-world guerrilla warfare.
The driving-focused picks
Forza Horizon 5 is open-world racing in Mexico. No crime but the driving satisfaction rivals GTA's.
Need for Speed Unbound is street racing with police chases. The illegal racing angle connects to GTA's car culture.
The Crew Motorfest is open-world racing across Hawaii.
The crime management alternatives
Schedule 1 is drug empire management — GTA's criminal economy without the driving and shooting. The schedule 1 tips post has more.
Payday 3 is cooperative heist missions.
Thief Simulator 2 is burglary simulation.
The sandbox chaos picks
Teardown is fully destructible voxel environments. Plan heists by literally demolishing buildings to create escape routes.
Goat Simulator 3 is chaos sandbox parody.
Garry's Mod and its successor S&box are sandbox physics playgrounds.
The upcoming GTA 6 wait
With GTA 6 arriving in 2026, the alternatives listed above are what's available while you wait. Nothing else is specifically GTA — Rockstar's production values and world-building set a bar that no competitor has matched. But pieces of the GTA experience (driving, crime, open-world freedom, chaos) exist across enough games to keep you occupied.
What we make at Choost
Granny's Rampage is top-down bullet heaven — completely different scale from GTA's open-world crime sandbox. For more open-world content, the best open world rpg, games like Cyberpunk, and rdr2 tips posts have more.
The shortest version
For closest GTA experience: Sleeping Dogs or Saints Row: The Third. For Rockstar quality: Red Dead Redemption 2. For cyberpunk city: Cyberpunk 2077. For pure driving: Forza Horizon 5. For crime management: Schedule 1. For destruction chaos: Teardown or Just Cause 4. Nothing replaces GTA specifically — Rockstar has no equal in this exact format. But the games above capture individual pieces of what makes GTA special.