No, we’re not yanking your chain. This news doesn’t come from Reddit, 4Chan, some guy with 54 followers on Twitter, or whatever. Kotaku is reporting that Grand Theft Auto 6 is in “early development” but don’t expect it anytime soon.
In an article talking about the new changes that have been put in place following the release of Red Dead Redemption 2, Kotaku’s Jason Schreier dropped the bombshell. In the piece, Schreier notes that the new GTA (it wasn’t explicitly called Grand Theft Auto 6 but for convenience, that’s what we’ll call it) will have a “moderately sized release” and will be expanded over time with updates. We obviously have no idea what “moderate” means but Rockstar’s standards are high and Grand Theft Auto is usually the industry benchmark.
We don’t expect that to change but from the sounds of it, the approach will be different. Rockstar’s been heavily criticized for their intense working conditions across their titles such as LA Noire and both Red Dead Redemption titles. It sounds like they’ll just be focusing on the core game with Grand Theft Auto 6 instead of splitting development with some team focusing on DLC content.
The idea is to minimize stress and crunch. Of course, the game is in its early stages and everyone’s allowed to breathe. The high stress usually comes within the last year of a game’s development. Rockstar employees are cautiously optimistic until they get deeper into the game’s development.
“The changes have been good enough for me to stay and give them a chance but let’s see what happens down the road when the pressures of delivering a final product become reality,” said an anonymous employee when speaking to Kotaku.
If you want a slightly better idea of where Grand Theft Auto 6’s development at, one dev said “it’s just starting up”.
“We’re talking tangentially about something that feels like it’s just starting up,” said another developer. “Of course it’s going to feel really good right now.”
Rockstar is a large company filled with multiple studios across the globe made up of thousands of employees, so it’s likely all hands on deck. When can we expect to see Grand Theft Auto 6? We really have no idea. It’s highly likely it’ll only be on next-gen and that we won’t see it until 2022 or 2023 at the earliest, especially if Rockstar maintains the 5 year gap between Grand Theft Auto V and Red Dead Redemption 2.
