GTA 6 Delay Might Have Saved the Game, Claims Leaker

GTA 6‘s delay was “necessary” to avoid creating a worse version of the game, claims a leaker. Rockstar Games is a studio that is known for making games that aim to exceed perfection. Their games are frequently seen as industry benchmarks and are the result of many years of work and hundreds of millions of dollars. There aren’t many developers that can take the amount of time that they do, epsecially since it has been a whopping 7 years since Rockstar released a brand new game. There have been some other releases, such as a port of Red Dead Redemption and the ill-fated GTA Trilogy remasters, but generally, it has been heads down on GTA 6 since 2018.

We finally got another great look at GTA 6 recently with a brand new trailer which released alongside new screenshots and other information on the game. It was a big relief for fans who have been waiting a year and a half for new info on the game, but haven’t heard a word from Rockstar on the game since the first trailer. It also came at the perfect time as GTA 6 got delayed to May 2026 just prior to that, which obviously bummed a lot of fans out. Some have questioned why GTA 6 was delayed and why Rockstar chose to push it so far back and we may have an answer.

GTA 6 Would’ve Been “Significantly Worse” Without 2026 Delay

For starters, Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier previously stated that Rockstar Games is looking to avoid crunch on GTA 6. Crunch is when developers have to put in excessive overtime (sometimes upwards of 80 – 100 hours a week) in the final stretch of a game’s development to get it done. Rockstar Games was previously criticized for cultivating this kind of culture on previous games and has gone to great lengths to avoid that by giving the team time to work as opposed to making people do unhealthy things to hit a release date.

Twitter user GameRoll, who correctly revealed the full names of GTA 6 protagonists Jason and Lucia before they were revealed, noted that the GTA 6 delay was “necessary”. Although GameRoll claims they aren’t an “insider” and they have limited information to offer fans, they noted that Rockstar had begun cutting features earlier this year to hit the fall 2025 release window. They claim that it would’ve made GTA 6 a “significantly worse game”, but didn’t mention what features were on the chopping block. It’s also unclear if any of those features have remained cut or if they’ve stayed in the game following the delay.

One thing I’ll also say is that this source made it very clear to me that a delay to 2026 was ABSOLUTELY necessary.

If we had gotten GTA 6 in 2025, it would have been a significantly worse game. They began cutting a lot of cool stuff to try and make that deadline. https://t.co/sU7ZZ2D79K

— GameRoll (@GameRoll_) May 11, 2025

Of course, it’s probably pretty likely that things will get cut no matter when GTA 6 comes out. There’s never enough time or money to put everything a studio wants into a game, it’s just how it goes. However, some fans in the replies recalled how Red Dead Redemption 2 clearly cut some content revolving around the Red Dead Redemption 1 part of the map along with other features. There’s a lot of cut content from that game and it seems like Rockstar is trying to squeeze as much of their original vision for GTA 6 into the game as possible.

Of course, post-launch DLC and updates could also put in new features that were previously scrapped as well. Only time will tell what’s to come for GTA 6, but it looks to be a pretty ambitious game with plenty to do.

GTA 6 will release on May 26th, 2026 for Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5.