GTA 6: Brace For A Possible Delay As Rockstar Devs Speak Off The Record

It appears as if the gaming industry may need to wait longer than it’d like to for its savior, Grand Theft Auto 6, as the possibility of the game’s release date getting pushed back to 2026 is seemingly increasing. Rockstar risks losing employees as it’s going to implement a return to office policy to limit the risk of any leaks. However, the company is notorious for crunch culture, and many suspect having employees return to the office will make it easier to enable this behavior.

One of the several Rockstar developers who reached out to gaming outlet Aftermath, said “I've been through a couple of projects, both of which had crunch. The first one was extremely difficult. I had way less gray hair back then. ... We want to continue the strides we've made as a company to remove that toxic culture."


It isn’t just crunch culture at issue for developers, either. Rockstar has teams that are distributed throughout the globe, so the return to office mandate doesn’t appear to be a necessary one. According to one Rockstar developer, “whether you were in the office or not, you were still doing remote work. ... You work with so many people on so many different teams. A good majority of them will not be at the place where you work."

Despite the pushback Rockstar is getting from developers, the game publisher is still targeting a release date sometime in 2025, according to Kotaku's own inside information. Anonymous sources told the site that the preferred window is still early 2025, although a conventional Fall release is more realistic. The company apparently views a 2026 release as a "fallback plan" or "emergency" option should development really hit any big bumps along the way.

As Rockstar begins to implement the new policy they will likely lose several developers, and some might be key parts of the team currently working on Grand Theft Auto 6. That developers feel that they need to reach out to journalistic outlets to share their feeling is proof of that. Losing such important team members will be a blow for game development, and why the danger of Grand Theft Auto 6 seeing a big delay is very real.