GTA 6 may still be delayed into 2027 warns former Rockstar dev

GTA 6 artwork of the two main characters — GTA 6 has been delayed twice already (Rockstar Games)

There’s hope that a new trailer for GTA 6 will drop this month, but there also remains the possibility of another delay.

Despite promises of a summer marketing campaign for GTA 6, there’s still very little sign of that happening, even though pre-orders for the game have now started.

If it were any other developer, this would be cause for concern, but Rockstar’s penchant for extreme secrecy is rivalled only by Nintendo and the fact that pre-orders are available has convinced most fans that the game will be ready for its November 19 release date.

At this point it would be a major surprise for GTA 6 to be smacked with another delay, this close to launch, and yet it remains entirely possible, at least according to former Rockstar employee Mike York.

York is a senior animator who worked on GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 during his five year tenure at Rockstar. He left the studio in 2017 and is currently employed at Seattle-based studio Highwire Games.

He was recently interviewed by Indy100 about his time at Rockstar and when asked about GTA 6’s chances of meeting its release date, York admitted he ‘would not be shocked at all’ if it was delayed a third time.

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This is based on his own experiences working on GTA 5, as he said that, ‘If November comes around and they’re thinking ‘this final mission we have is still not looking very good and there are still a few bugs in this final mission’, they’ll push it six more months if they have to.’

As a reminder, GTA 5 also suffered a delay after pre-orders started. Initially, it was meant to launch in spring 2013, but Rockstar postponed it until that September for further polishing.

The PC version was delayed no less than three times, while the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S versions were pushed out of November 2021 and instead arrived four months later in March 2022.

Rockstar isn’t afraid to delay games if it feels they need more time in the oven, even if people have already placed pre-orders. As York says, Rockstar doesn’t feel they’re under any restrictions.

‘They can do whatever they want and people will wait right now, it doesn’t matter. If they need to do what they need to do, they’ll do it,’ says York, adding, ‘I don’t think it would hurt them or anything.’

You only need to look at the pre-order data to see how much anticipation there is for GTA 6. Despite the lack of raw gameplay footage and Rockstar’s continued silence, the game is predicted to make as much as $5.2 billion (about £3.8 billion) in its first week, that’s approximately half of GTA 5’s entire lifetime revenue.

Another last minute delay into 2027 would be frustrating for fans, although other publishers might be even more annoyed since they’ve purposely shoved all their biggest releases into the September and October windows to avoid GTA 6… which would be for naught if GTA 6 is delayed again.

Regardless, it is theorised that there’ll be an update on GTA 6 this month, ideally in the form of a new trailer, since Take-Two is having its next earnings call tomorrow, on August 7.

Insider NateTheHate has also expressed confidence that GTA 6’s lack of updates isn’t cause for concern, saying ‘I expect to see a fair bit of GTA 6’ this month.