Well, it’s not exactly happy news: It’s looking more and more likely that Grand Theft Auto 6, the next Rockstar project, won’t be released until 2025. With this release window designed to cut down on crunch, it appears that Rockstar is taking its time with this game. More reports are coming out corroborating these rumors, and others that suggest the maps we’re going to play on will start small, then be expanded over time.
We’d previously heard rumors that GTA VI would not be out until 2025 — these came from YouTuber Tom Henderson. He also added that the game would be set in the modern day, possibly in an updated version of Vice City. Many of these details were corroborated over the weekend by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, formerly of Kotaku. Schreier reported last year that Rockstar had restructured in order to reduce crunch and other toxic workplace practices for which it was criticized after the release of Red Dead Redemption 2.
Schreier had previously reported that the smaller map was part of the plan to reduce Rockstar developer crunch pre-launch: They’d start with a smaller map and then expand it over time. Both Henderson and Schreier said that this map, whichever city it ends up being, will be expanded and added to over time, in much the same way that maps in popular battle royale games will be.
VGC has also said this information had been corroborated by its own sources. So we’ve got multiple different people saying this is what they know, so it’s probably safest to assume this is going to be the case. Naturally, we can’t take all these reports as gospel, and we should take everything with a grain of salt just because that’s always wise. If we get GTA 6 sooner, it’ll at least be a pleasant surprise.
Source: VGC
