[3] The first version of Multi Theft Auto, dubbed Grand Theft Auto III: Alternative Multiplayer, attempted to fill in this gap by extending an already existing cheating tool with functionality that allowed the game to be played with a very crude form of two-player racing over a computer network purely as a proof of concept,[3] similar to how the now-defunct XBAND service worked by manipulating game memory in order to add online multiplayer functionality.

Newer versions of Multi Theft Auto with increasingly better gameplay and other improvements were released based on the same concept of game manipulation, by a small team of developers.

With the introduction of successor Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, it became clear that this computer game title also lacked any form of network gameplay.

[4] As the original concept (of game manipulation by memory) was prone to various problems with performance and stability that often resulted in application crashes, this new framework was created as a successor and laid the foundation of all future Multi Theft Auto software.

[7] The successor release, dubbed "Deathmatch", was designed to improve upon "Race" by providing minimal sandbox style gameplay that could be extended by users and developers.

[9] This version was followed by a second "Developer Preview" that introduced several new features and fixes and was subsequently followed by a period of major code restructuring that led to the open-source relaunch on Friday, 21 November 2008 under the GPLv3 License.

On Saturday, 22 August, Multi Theft Auto: San Andreas v1.0 was officially distributed as the first open source release.

The initial "Deathmatch" version and its underlying engine presented a series of relevant changes to the functionality of the modification as well as the introduction of an online community content delivery system.

Some gameplay elements include checkpoints, spawn points, power-ups, weapons and various objects ranging from ramps to exploding barrels.