GTA Online dark web: All you need to know

Those who have spent many years playing GTA 5 and GTA Online will be familiar with the illegal website, the Open Road. This website is the GTA equivalent of the real-world "dark web".

For those few who are unfamiliar with the actual dark web, it holds a number of similarities to GTA Online's the Open Road. The design of the Open Road, for instance, uses almost the exact same texts and colors associated with the Silk Road.

This article hopes to educate GTA fans on the GTA Online "dark web".

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How the Open Road in GTA Online is like the real Silk Road

Open Road is a website accessible from the players' MC Clubhouse in GTA Online. Some GTA Online fans recognized this website layout from a similar real-life site named the "Silk Road".

The Silk Road was a dark web site founded in February 2011 by a computer programmer and hacker known as "Dread Pirate Roberts", a pseudonym from the film The Princess Bride.

The real-life criminal's name was Ross Ulbricht. Ross created the idea of a secure way in which to communicate and sell illegal goods online in order to disrupt the government's laws and the status-quo. The Silk Road came out as a drug-selling website, not dissimilar to the ones seen on the Open Road in GTA Online.

Ross Ulbricht's mantra about free trade, free information and anonymity really strikes a chord with many GTA Online players who enjoy the game for all of the illegal activities they can take part in, including selling drugs for their MC Clubhouse businesses.

MC Clubhouse missions allow players to sell everything from counterfeit money and documents to marijuana and other more dangerous drugs. These missions involve players driving to different locations and dropping off supplies there. There are sometimes multiple drop locations.

Players have a certain time limit to drop off these supplies, but they never meet the buyers or learn anything about them. The buyers are anonymous, as is the GTA Online player's character, having been contacted through the Open Road. This is exactly how business is conducted on the dark web's Silk Road in real life – complete annonimity and the money just goes seamlessly into the bank on completion of the drop.