There's some worrying news... GTA 6 is facing potential delays
GTA 6 is one of the most anticipated games of all time, and with that anticipation comes a high workload and a tight schedule for Rockstar Games. Recent reports show that it is increasingly likely that GTA 6 will be delayed.
The news of a potential delay to GTA 6 will be disappointing to the millions of fans eagerly awaiting the game next year. Kotaku recently spoke with their internal sources at Rockstar who openly discussed the possibility that the game will not be released in early 2025 as predicted, but rather in Autumn 2025 or even early 2026 as a potential fallback option.
However, it would be difficult to confirm a delay as Rockstar were smart with their first GTA 6 trailer and only stated a release date of 2025. They did not elaborate whether or not this would be early or late 2025, although no "Spring 2025" label was officially given. They purposefully left the date ambiguous to allow for any potential delays to go unnoticed. Rockstar will be fully aware of the importance of sticking to their release date, after the negative sentiment from the public after repeated delays from other games studios big releases: Halo Infinite (delayed from 2020 to 2021) and Cyberpunk 2077 (delayed multiple times).
On the employees' side, concern seems to be in order according to American media reports. Indeed, while there has been progress in terms of working conditions at Rockstar, some fear a regression as the game's release approaches. One of them explains: "I have been involved in two projects, both of which experienced nervous breakdowns. The first one was extremely difficult. I had a lot less gray hair at the time. We want to continue the progress we have made as a company to eliminate this toxic culture." It is worth noting that recently, the management decided to force its employees to return to work in the office. This strategy was fully endorsed by Jennifer Kolbe, its vice president: "By making these changes now, we are in the best position to deliver the next Grand Theft Auto with the level of quality and polish that we know it demands, as well as a publication roadmap that matches the scale and ambition of the game".
Historically Rockstar have not been the type of games studio to release a game before it was finished: GTA 4, GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 being several recent examples. The gaming world can hold out hope that delay or no delay, Rockstar will release the best possible version of GTA 6 when they are fully ready to do so. Whether that be in 2025, or 2026 it should be worth the wait, and on the plus side, it will just give Xbox and Playstation long enough to produce a next gen console that is fully optimised for GTA 6 !