After a decade of building anticipation, Rockstar Games finally announced Grand Theft Auto 6 last December. The studio shared a short trailer confirming that Vice City — Rockstar’s fictional, heightened take on Miami — would be the setting of the latest entry. At the end of the trailer, the studio offered a vague release window of 2025, but according to a new report from Kotaku, the studio might not have GTA 6 ready for next year after all.
According to Kotaku, sources with knowledge of the game’s development say that “early 2025” is Rockstar’s planned launch timing for GTA 6. That is still the studio’s plan for now, but internal issues could push the release date back to late 2025 or even into 2026.
As Kotaku notes, Bloomberg reported in February that Rockstar Games was asking employees to return to the office five days a week starting in April. Weeks later, Aftermath spoke to several Rockstar employees, many of whom were concerned that this was a sign the company would slip back into habits of crunch and overwork that had been reported on in the past.
Rockstar says that quality and security are the main drivers behind this unpopular policy. There is no doubt some truth to that, especially considering the developer was the victim of a massive leak in 2022. But anonymous sources tell Kotaku that Rockstar is also worried about a potential delay as the development of GTA 6 has been “falling behind.”
The report notes that Rockstar typically waits until the last minute to make significant changes. If GTA 6 does end up being pushed back to fall 2025, we probably won’t know about it for at least another few months. In fact, Kotaku suggests that the next trailer might not reflect the delay, even if the game does end up launching later than expected.
Unfortunately, Kotaku wasn’t able to suss out any information about the second trailer.
