GTA 6 Reportedly in the Final Stretch of Development

A new report has asserted that developer Rockstar Games is now embarking upon the final phase of development for Grand Theft Auto VI. At the end of this past year, Rockstar finally announced its next GTA installment with a broad 2025 launch window. Since that time, fans have been trying their best to try to determine when in the coming year GTA VI will actually arrive. And while we still don’t know exactly, more details about what’s going on behind the scenes at Rockstar have now come about. 

As reported by Bloomberg, Rockstar Games is said to be entering the last stretch of development on Grand Theft Auto VI which has led those in charge of the studio to make some big changes. Notably, Rockstar leadership is now asking all employees to begin returning to the company’s offices to work on-site five days per week. The reason for this decision is so that Rockstar can ensure there will be no more security breaches associated with the project. Previously in 2022, a major leak tied to Grand Theft Auto VI appeared on the internet following a hack that hit Rockstar. 

“Making these changes now puts us in the best position to deliver the next Grand Theft Auto at the level of quality and polish we know it requires, along with a publishing roadmap that matches the scale and ambition of the game,” said Rockstar’s head of publishing Jenn Kolbe in an internal message to employees on the matter.

Based on this new report alone, it’s hard to estimate when exactly Rockstar might be intending to release Grand Theft Auto VI. In all likelihood, the studio doesn’t have a concrete release date for the time being and just has a broad internal goal. Depending on how the next few months of development progress, this launch window could then shift backward further into 2025 if roadblocks are met. 

For the time being, all that’s known with certainty is that GTA VI will be hitting both PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X at some point in the coming year. A PC iteration of the game has yet to be announced, and given Rockstar’s history with PC ports, it likely won’t launch until many months or years after the console versions.