How GTA Online’s alien civil war split Los Santos between green and purple players

For a few weeks in 2020, GTA Online became a very different game. Los Santos was suddenly full of players wearing bright green and purple alien suits. They travelled in groups, piled into vans and chased down anyone wearing the wrong colour. Baseball bats and fists often replaced assault rifles and rocket launchers. It looked ridiculous. That was the point. What began as a simple online joke quickly grew into one of GTA Online’s most recognisable player-created events. Green aliens fought purple aliens, public sessions became temporary battlegrounds, and thousands of players copied what they’d seen in short gaming clips. Rockstar didn’t create the conflict. Players did.

How the GTA Online alien war started

The basic idea couldn’t have been much simpler. Players dressed in matching green alien bodysuits would travel around Los Santos together. When they found another player, they’d jump out, surround them and attack using melee weapons.

That small detail mattered. GTA Online already had tanks, helicopters, sniper rifles, explosives and heavily armed vehicles. Choosing baseball bats instead made the encounters look deliberately absurd. The videos were short, easy to understand and easy to copy.

Soon, more players started wearing green alien outfits. Public sessions filled with small groups trying the same trick. You didn’t need a complicated setup, a high player rank or expensive military equipment. You just needed the costume and a few people willing to join in. Then the purple aliens arrived. Instead of attacking random players, some people began wearing purple versions of the same outfit and hunting the green groups. Almost overnight, the joke had two sides. That changed everything.

Green versus purple gave players simple rules

GTA Online can be chaotic even on a quiet day. Players are usually doing different things at the same time, from missions and races to business deliveries and random fights. The alien war gave that chaos a basic structure. Green fought purple. Purple fought green.

You could understand what was happening just by looking at someone’s outfit. That simplicity helped the trend spread. Players didn’t need a guide explaining how to take part. There was no complicated scoring system and no official matchmaking. If you owned the right suit, you already knew which side you were on.

The outfits effectively became team colours. Vehicles also became part of the routine. Groups packed themselves into vans and other cars, drove across the map and jumped out when they found an opponent. Some players followed the unofficial melee-only idea closely. Others ignored it completely and brought guns, explosives and whatever else they had available. There were no real rules, after all. That was part of the appeal.

The timing helped the trend explode

The alien war appeared during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, when huge numbers of people were spending more time at home and online. GTA V was already several years old by then, but GTA Online still had a massive audience and a flexible open world where players could invent their own entertainment.

The alien trend fitted that environment perfectly. You didn’t have to wait for Rockstar to release a special event. Nothing needed to be downloaded. Players took existing costumes, vehicles and weapons and turned them into something that felt like a temporary new game mode.

Other groups soon appeared as well. Some players dressed as police officers. Others copied the look of government agents or Men in Black-style characters and went after both alien factions.

Public sessions became increasingly unpredictable. You might leave a property expecting to start a normal mission and instead find several brightly coloured aliens running towards you with baseball bats.

Rockstar joined in

Eventually, the trend became big enough for Rockstar to acknowledge it inside GTA Online. The green and purple alien bodysuits were temporarily made available for free, making it much easier for players to pick a side without spending a large amount of in-game money. That pushed the event even further.

Players organised larger battles, and Los Santos International Airport became one of the best-known locations for the final stage of the green-versus-purple conflict. By that point, the alien war wasn’t just a collection of unrelated clips anymore. It had become a recognisable event with factions, meeting points and its own informal behaviour. Still, there was never a proper official rulebook. Players made things up as they went.

GTA Online didn’t need a new game mode

That’s what made the alien war interesting from a game design perspective. Rockstar didn’t build a new faction system. It didn’t create a dedicated alien map or introduce special matchmaking. Players built the entire thing using systems that had already been sitting inside GTA Online for years. A costume became a uniform. A van became a troop carrier. A baseball bat became part of the rules.

Short videos gave everyone else the instructions. It’s a good example of what can happen when an open-world multiplayer game gives players enough freedom to create their own reasons to play. For around a month, GTA Online wasn’t mainly about businesses, heists or expensive cars for a lot of players. Sometimes the only question that mattered was much simpler. Green or purple?

Spread the love