If this phenomenon were to spread like the plague, you can bet your ass that no-one would want a cure. Random players in GTA Online are reporting a surprise deposit of GTA$ 250,000 in their in-game accounts with no indication as to why, and some are even getting the bonus multiple times.

Rockstar has held special events and promotions which rewarded players with the same amount for logging into GTA Online at a certain time, most recently during the game's third anniversary. When initial reports of the "random 250k" began popping up, most people assumed it was that amount arriving late.

However as this became more and more frequent, players who already got their anniversary cash started receiving this bonus as well. It was seemingly random, with players who partook in such promotions before getting cash sometimes, sometimes not, and entirely new players also occasionally getting the bonus while others remained broke.

There was seemingly no system to it, and the random nature of the bonuses was seemingly confirmed when reports of players getting the cash twice started rolling in. Recently, some have even claimed to have received it a third time.

But why is Rockstar handing out this free cash? There isn't any kind of promotion regarding such a reward running currently that the community knows of, and the random nature of it all seems to be a deviation from the company's usual behavior.

Is this to prepare players for the upcoming DLC? If yes, then we shudder in advance merely thinking about what prices might be like, if Rockstar is throwing cash at players prior to release. Players did get a bit of a cash bonus before particularly major DLC releases in the past.

Or could this be the secret guerilla act of a Robin Hood-esque rogue employee who snuck a runtime into the game's code handing out cash to estranged players who are starting to burn out from the constant grinding? While making cash in GTA Online isn't half as hard as it is made out to be so long as you know what you're doing, it is still notoriously difficult compared to other games.

Then again, it might even be the best kind of glitch or bug in the system. The repeated deliveries of the cash to the same people might indicate this, or that at least there is some sort of indexing issue going on in the background.

Have you received your free 250k in GTA Online, or are you still waiting?