Max Payne 3's multiplayer will have players form 'crews' to engage in dastardly gangland deeds, but leaving the game isn't as simple as stopping playing. These criminal associations will carry over into Grand Theft Auto V, Rockstar has revealed, so you can easily keep playing with the same hoodlums when the open-world murder simulator launches.

Crews are part of Rockstar's plan to "make multiplayer deeper and richer than what's currently available, much more easily accessible to the newcomer and rewarding for the hardcore," VP Dan Houser told IGN.

Crews are groups of players, either small public crews or capless public crews, with optional emblems so you can fly your colours. Players can join up to five crews. Matchmaking will try to put players with crewmates, so disparate Shackers could find themselves joined up, and there'll be special perks and bonuses for crews.

Max Payne 3 will try to stoke feuds, tracking kills between crews across games, and automatically starting special "a first-to-10-kills battle" if you're playing in a game against players you're feuding with. Naturally, you get bonus XP for your gang warfare naughtiness.

"The beauty of this system is that crews persist over time and across future games," Houser said. "Multiplayer is an ever-more important part of all our games moving forward. And by creating crews through Social Club, the crews that you create in Max Payne 3 will be ready and available for you to play in Grand Theft Auto V from day one."

No worries about trying to reconnect with your criminal cohorts in future games, then. One can easily see the mechanics of feuds and wars carrying over into GTA V, too.