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I don't think it's obvious. In terms of player count (which is how I would personally rank success), it is not the most successful by a long way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-played_video_game...

However, games like PUBG and Fortnite are free-to-play (PUBG is only free on mobile?) so in terms of actual sales, you could say GTA is more successful. Still not sure I'd class it as an "online shooter", though.

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GTA is many things for many different people. For some people, it's a racing game, for others it is about socializing and modding cars, for some it's a dogfighting game, some spend thousands of hours grinding the same set of PvE missions (for some reason), and for many it's a third and first person shooter / warzone simulator.

I totally agree, the same way many games are. But in the context of saying "x is by far most successful y on the planet" I think we have to stop somewhere. Otherwise an open game like GTA V becomes the most successful game (in terms of copies sold) in pretty much every category you can't reasonably stick Minecraft in. I don't think there's much value in that.

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