Twitch stream lets you spy on the lives of GTA 5's NPCs (Updated)

Update: The feed is live, and you can watch it above, on Twitch, or through the San Andreas Community Cam site. The NPCs are all very, very unhappy today.

Original story: Remember last year's GTA 5 deer cam? Using a modded version of GTA 5, streamer bwatanabe was able to live-stream footage of Twitch of a deer living in Los Santos. The camera followed the deer on its unscripted adventures, making for some intriguing and occasionally hilarious viewing. That project ended last April, but there's a new one afoot by the same streamer beginning tomorrow, and this time the cameras will follow citizens as they make their way around GTA 5.

"San Andreas Community Cam is a live video stream from a computer running a modded version of Grand Theft Auto V, hosted on Twitch.tv. The mod follows the citizens of San Andreas, a fictional state in GTA V based on California. The citizens are programmed to control themselves and make their own decisions, with no one actually playing the game. The citizens are ‘playing themselves’, with all activity unscripted."

You'll be able to view it here starting Friday, January 20, at 8:00am PST. We'll update this post when the cam goes live. And, without reading too much into this project, it launches on Inauguration Day, all donations to San Andreas Community Cams go to Planned Parenthood, and in the sample video above every single citizen is sobbing in despair. So, there may be bit of subtle political commentary involved.

Thanks to @CPriestman for the tip.

Christopher Livingston
Senior Editor

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.

Latest in Grand Theft Auto
gta 6 trailer
Publishers 'don't want to be anywhere near' Grand Theft Auto 6 when it launches: 'It's proving to be very stressful'
A man with purple hair and face tattoos poses for a mugshot in the GTA 6 trailer.
Playable GTA 6 map nuked without warning by Take-Two lawyers: 'My guess is that the map was probably a little too accurate'
Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer still - woman in the front seat of a car, looking out the back window while holding a wad of cash
The specter of a GTA 6 delay haunts the games industry: 'Some companies are going to tank' if they guess wrong, says analyst
A man holding a gun drives a boat as money flies out the back in GTA Online
Rockstar hornswoggles lapsed GTAO players with $3 million welcome-back offer that actually requires you to spend money to get most of it
GTA 5 characters
GTA 5 publisher takes legal aim at account-selling site for allegedly raking in 'millions in revenue', while recruiting hackers to keep its cogs turning
GTA 5 Enhanced
Grand Theft Auto 5 Enhanced is a bitter-sweet return to Rockstar's money-making machine
Latest in News
gta 6 trailer
Publishers 'don't want to be anywhere near' Grand Theft Auto 6 when it launches: 'It's proving to be very stressful'
A female Zoi making two hearts with her fingers.
Following 24 hours of Denuvo-based backlash, Inzoi is taking a surprising step and removing it entirely: 'We want to sincerely apologise for not aligning more closely with player expectations'
An image of a Helldiver from Helldivers 2 shooting at a red dragon from Dungeons & Dragons.
'Ok, so dragon builds are a thing now': galaxy-brained Helldivers 2 player incinerates a bile titan with a hover pack and a flamethrower
An ancient, angry stone mech from No Man's Sky's new Relics update
No Man’s Sky lets you unearth ancient, angry mechs in the astro-archaeology filled Relics update
Assassin's Creed Shadows promo image
Ubisoft scores a legendary ratio against Elon Musk on his own platform—which hopefully marks a final end to all the Assassin's Creed Shadows' culture war nonsense
Tzarina Katarin Bokha, the Ice Queen of Kislev
Total War: Warhammer 3 rolls out a cool Kislev overhaul, changes befitting Tzeench’s magic, new projectile units and creakier skeletal horses