It’s honestly a bit ironic how Rockstar Games can unite the gaming space, even when it’s not actually intentionally trying to do so. If you recall, a few years back, there was a major leak from within the company, dropping all sorts of videos and looks into what would become GTA 6. Naturally, some people took the “wrong lesson” from the videos and started attacking Rockstar. Then, the gaming industry came together to tell the truth and support the development. Now, with the delay of its latest game, CD Projekt Red has stepped forward to both support them and remind them of the truth they now face.
When Rockstar Games made the official announcement for GTA 6’s delay to late 2026, many people responded for various reasons. But it was CD Projekt Red who did this:
At first, you might think they’re insulting Rockstar Games, as the developer was just over six months out from release, and then delayed it another six months. But that’s not actually the case. You see, with CD Projekt Red, they too had a game that was “taking a long time to come out” and kept getting delayed: Cyberpunk 2077. The game had a LONG development cycle, but at one point, they just decided “no more delays are happening.”
That would come back to haunt them in all sorts of ways, not the least of which was that the game was a buggy mess that was basically unplayable to anyone who didn’t have the highest-end gaming PCs out there. That led to a surge of refunds, to the extent that certain stores refused to sell the game because of its state.
The team then had to spend years trying to fix it, and needed help from a certain Netflix anime series to get people to give it a chance again before dropping its DLC, which actually delivered on the promises the dev team gave in the first place.
So, the message wasn’t about how “another delay happened,” it was a cautionary reminder to not release the game until it’s truly 100% ready. CDPR is still earning back faith and money that it lost during the launch of its game, and it clearly doesn’t want Rockstar Games to go through the same thing.
Because if after all of these delays and all of this “polishing,” the game still isn’t a full-on masterpiece? Then everyone will wonder why it took so long, and if “Rockstar Games can ever make a great game again?”
