With GTA 6 just over a month away from launch, Rockstar has finally started teasing what we can expect from the best part of every Grand Theft Auto game: the radio stations. The studio has revealed a handful of genre-focused stations covering major artists from across the years, and on top of the proper GTA 6 soundtrack, we're also getting a series first in the form of in-game podcasts.

You can preview six of the stations in two minute bursts right now, offering a chance to hear a bit of the DJs and brief samplers of the relevant music. There's Cocotea FM, focused on modern Latin music; Back Country Radio, which covers classic outlaw country; Afro Bank FM, offering a wide array of African music; The Chamber 106.6, blasting classic metal; Flash FM, which runs modern pop music; and Dirty South Classics, which will hit your old-school rap and hip-hop needs.

These aren't all the stations in the game – the announcement also confirms classic rock and talk radio options – but even this small selection proves that Rockstar is once again going all-out for the soundtrack. Loretta Lynn, Pantera, and Charli XCX all in the same game? That's a premium selection, right there.

"Plus, for the first time ever, Grand Theft Auto VI introduces a series of on-demand podcasts for Jason and Lucia to experience beyond Leonida's terrestrial radio," Rockstar adds, "with both radio and podcasts available to listen to in vehicles and on foot through newly introduced headphones and earbuds connected to their smartphones."

In-game podcasts are hardly a new idea – you can find examples at least as far back as Metal Gear Solid 4 – but it's notable that they're appearing in GTA for the first time here. Admittedly, it's likely not all that different from the talk radio that's been in the series for years, but it is a fun acknowledgement of just how much listening habits have changed since GTA 5 launched back in 2013.

I'm not being facetious when I call the radio stations the best part of GTA. I've always loved fake radio banter in games going back to my time playing Streets of SimCity, and Rockstar's talent for music curation has always been impeccable. So many of my memories of playing San Andreas or GTA 4 are tied to specific moments cruising through the world with particular songs blaring over the car radio in the background, and I'm looking forward to making some new ones in GTA 6.

Check out our guide to all the GTA 6 cars we know about so far if you want to know what you'll be cruisin' in.

GTA 6 leaker Cyberleek has allegedly posted more footage of the game online, with story spoilers apparently included in the latest batch.

Earlier this year, clips of GTA 6 started circulating online ahead of Rockstar's big extended Netflix reveal from a leaker referring to themselves as Cyberleek. This featured a ton of gameplay footage, a leak of the game's apparent map, and some story moments like a four-minute clip of Lucia's prologue in-game, dropping the first batch of story spoilers. Naturally, Take-Two and Rockstar took action against the leaks, but they still persisted, until the leaker seemingly disappeared with about $250,000 in crypto earnings, going silent in late August.

However, it seems the leaker has returned, as Rockstar community member and dataminer TexFunz2 reports on Twitter that "Cyberleek has released 367 MB worth of GTA 6 leaked footage," which is 25 minutes long and "contains new footage and new cutscenes." And while they didn't drop any story details or anything, TexFunz2's only commentary on the footage says: "Yes. You can play as Jason with his ding dong exposed."

Since this was posted, the footage has since been shared on social media by users, confirming the details outlined by TexFunz2. This includes cutscenes, in-game racing events, and a ton of naked Jason gameplay. It also shows first-person gameplay, which had featured in GTA 5 upon its PS4 and Xbox One releases, but a mode hadn't been confirmed by Rockstar for GTA 6, with some who saw the game reporting that one wouldn't be included at launch.

Presumably this footage will soon be taken down by Take-Two and Rockstar, but it does mean spoilers are now out there. So basically, if you don't want any spoilers for GTA 6, I'd probably start muting some terms on social media right about now, because this could be the start of a new string of leaks.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 lead wants GTA 6 to open the door to charging more for games.

In GTA 6, Rockstar Games has made a "very conscious effort to open things up where possible" in its missions, giving players multiple routes and ways to tackle the tasks laid out in front of them "without compromising the quality of the experience."

That's according to Rockstar North co-studio lead Rob Nelson, who spoke to IGN earlier this year about the "balance between freedom and storytelling" in an interview that's now been published in full.

"It is a challenge and sometimes when you are trying to create a specific or hopefully compelling narrative, the narrative aspect does need to take precedence at times – at least for us it does," Nelson explains.

"To move the narrative forward in a believable way, you have to hit these beats, and so in those cases we have to kind of guide the experience. But with this game we have made a very conscious effort to open things up where possible, without compromising the quality of the experience," he continues.

Nelson refers to the first mission seen in the GTA 6 Extended Look which premiered on Netflix, noting: "Where they're in the tower block trying to get out – there are multiple routes out of that tower block." Similarly, he adds, "the mission where they meet Raul and he gets in the back of the car – the first bit is on rails because you, the player as Jason, are shooting and Lucia's driving, but then you switch and you're driving. There is an optimal route that you're told to get out, but if you don't follow it, you can still get out – the mission is essentially a police chase."

And those missions are just examples. Nelson explains that Rockstar ultimately didn't want any mission that uses the game's systems, like the wanted system, to feel at odds with how those mechanics work when you're simply exploring Leonida. "Anything where a mission can become systemic and it's a wanted level or robbery system – we try to make it so that it doesn't feel inconsistent with how the game works in the open world," he says.

If this goes as deep as it sounds, there's no doubt we're going to be seeing all sorts of weird ways to progress through GTA 6's story next month. Considering that Nelson also says that, like Red Dead Redemption 2, he believes GTA 6 is also "built for" fans replaying the game multiple times, it sounds like Rockstar expects this story to keep us entertained for a long time to come.

With sex in GTA 6, studio boss suggests Rockstar doesn't want another Hot Coffee moment: "It has to be done right."

I don't mean to alarm you, but GTA 6 is set to launch next month. There's obviously going to be a lot for fans to discover come release day, but one potential learning curve might come in the form of earning enough in-game cash to keep the narrative flowing.

Or that's what it sounds like, according to Rockstar North co-studio boss Rob Nelson. Chatting with IGN in an interview from earlier this year that's now been posted in full, the lead discusses the importance of money in GTA 6, and how you won't actually be able to progress through the story if you're broke.

"We have made money matter more in this story than I think it has in previous GTA games," Nelson says. "There are times when you actually have to go out into the world and make money – whether you're boosting cars and selling them or sticking places up, there will be parts of the game where you need to make money to advance the mission flow."

It'll be interesting to see how exactly Rockstar balances this – if it's too much of a grind, it's easy to imagine it being a point of frustration for players. Selling stolen fancy cars has got to feel more engaging than getting Jason a 9-5 retail job, though, so you'd hope the process doesn't leave players feeling bored.

Regardless, it sounds like Jason and Lucia's fortunes are probably going to play some kind of key role in the narrative if you literally can't progress without enough cash in your pockets. Only six weeks to go until we find out exactly what.

With sex in GTA 6, studio boss suggests Rockstar doesn't want another Hot Coffee moment: "It has to be done right."

Although Sony's decision to end all physical disc production for new games on PlayStation consoles in 2028 has proven quite controversial, to say the least, not everyone thinks that a digital-only world would be all bad.

One such person is Hiroshi Matsuyama, CEO fo CyberConnect 2 – a studio best known for its manga and anime-based fighting games (think Naruto: Ultimate Ninja and the like) as well as its .hack series made in collaboration with the ever-beloved Bandai Namco.

He makes his stance clear in a new post over on X (as translated by Automaton), stating that a complete shift to digital game distribution and no physical would be "nothing but a positive thing."

That is, from the perspective of developers themselves. He explains that digital games are more profitable, using his own studio as an example. It has to purchase discs and/or game cards directly from manufacturers at companies like Nintendo and Sony to produce physical copies for their respective platforms, adding an extra layer of expense to the whole process.

Going digital would eliminate this pricey layer, of course.

Matsuyama understands why folks prefer discs and such, as "culturally, physical copies were a normal thing" – but "nowadays, they can't win in terms of convenience."

He also cites Capcom and Square Enix here, stating that over 90% or so of their sales are digital. In that case, it doesn't make financial sense to continue producing physical editions of games. "Developers work for their salaries," after all – and profit is undeniably important.

"If you want to release physical games even if it means that salaries will be reduced," as the dev describes, "then sure, I can make it happen – but I don't think there's anyone willing to do that."

In short, he doesn't think continuing to support physical copies "for a minority of collectors and enthusiasts" is realistic or plausible, but he's not sure they'll disappear suddenly now, either.

There'll still be codes in boxes yet. Discs specifically, though? Those "are doomed to fail."

Matsuyama then brings Rockstar Games' own GTA 6 up, noting how it's digital-only because it's "too big to fit on a physical disc." In fact, most games in general now "are too large to fit," according to the CyberConnect 2 lead, and "that's why they're shifting to digital releases." And, again, that's apparently a good thing.

"It's important to make that shift," as he concludes. As for what kind of impact it will make…" Well, "there will be nothing but positive things. Profitability will rise much faster, and developers will get more bonuses."

I'm not sure it's a good shift myself, but hey – at least he makes some valid points from a dev's point of view.

PlayStation is "hearing the feedback from customers" on discs, says JRPG boss whose business is built on physical games

GTA 6 is about to put us in the shoes of power couple Jason and Lucia, but while different age ratings suggest a more explicit game than GTA 5 with sex scenes and more, Rockstar North co-studio boss Rob Nelson also says that the devs wanted to get intimacy "right."

Speaking to IGN earlier this year in an interview that's now been published in full, Nelson specifically addresses GTA 6's handling of "physical intimacy" after IGN points out how bad many other games have traditionally been at doing so.

"We don't want to be so bad at it," Nelson begins. "These characters feel very right together – they really do. For anybody that wants to play around with the idea of role-playing their relationship, it's amazing. So many people on the team have connected with the characters. But physical intimacy is a huge part of a relationship, and so it has to be done right. Like anything that we do, we have to iterate and try things and iterate on it until we figure out what feels right."

He reiterates: "We definitely want to err on the right side of it."

It's at this point that IGN suggests that there are certain minigames that you wouldn't want to see show up, to which Nelson laughs, and says: "I think that's right."

Although it's not mentioned by name, the very likely implication here is that Rockstar doesn't want a repeat of GTA: San Andreas's notorious Hot Coffee moment. The scrapped minigame allowed CJ to have sex with his girlfriend, and while it wasn't meant to be playable in the final version of the game, that didn't stop it from being datamined and later made available by modders.

The controversy and backlash surrounding the Hot Coffee incident was enormous, though I'm sure that legal drama isn't Rockstar's concern with GTA 6's portrayal of sex. Rather, it sounds like it's about handling how it's presented in the right way – not that it'd take much improvement from rhythmically moving the control sticks and filling an "excitement" bar.

Exactly what Rockstar has in mind remains to be seen, but GTA 6's recent PEGI 18+ age rating states that we can expect "scenes of intercourse and occasional scenes of sexual fetishes," so make of that what you will.

GTA 6 and San Andreas show how much game development has changed: In the '00s, Rockstar turned a Clair Obscur Expedition 33-sized budget into $600 million.

Xbox chief strategy officer Matthew Ball has commented on GTA 6 streaming rumors, saying the game won't be streaming on PC, nor exclusively on Xbox.

Earlier this week, The Verge reported that Xbox CEO Asha Sharma told employees during an all-hands meeting that the company has something planned for GTA 6 that "no other platform holder is doing," which sources identified as Xbox landing exclusive streaming rights for GTA 6. This would've meant that to stream the game, you would need Xbox Cloud Gaming, but more crucially, it would potentially mean that the game would be available for PC and mobile players to play via Xbox Cloud Gaming on the platforms.

However, Ball posted on Twitter to acknowledge this report, saying: "While the excitement for GTA 6 and Xbox is great to see, it has also led to some misreporting. We are looking forward to launching GTA 6 on Xbox November 19, though the game will not be streaming exclusively or to PC," debunking the report.

With Ball's wording, the implication seems to be that GTA 6 will be available to stream, however, it'll be excluded from the Xbox Cloud Streaming PC app.

The absence of PC streaming is interesting, as obviously the lack of a PC version of the game has been a major talking point. Rockstar Games typically goes console-first, whether that be from a desire to make the PC version as good as it can be or just knowing that people will double dip on a PC version when it releases in a year or two, so perhaps it is intentionally not allowing streaming on the platform.

Although with other services like Amazon Luna and Nvidia GeForce Now, there obviously isn't a console to go along with them, I'm not sure PC being excluded is a given. Red Dead Redemption 2 did come to streaming, but it was through a Stadia release that dropped weeks after the PC version.

However, it's worth noting that Xbox's new game streaming limits that will only allow 15 hours of game time if you have Xbox Game Pass Ultimate – with more hours being able for purchase – also come into effect in November, the same month GTA 6 releases. Given that Rockstar Games titles are generally pretty long, I'd wager that's not a coincidence.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 lead wants GTA 6 to open the door to charging more for games.

Mountains emerged. Rivers carved canyons. And a whole bunch of other stuff happened between the release of GTA 5 and the impending launch of GTA 6. In that time, developer Rockstar Games, in step with the broader games industry, ballooned in size and racked up expenses to match. But long before the days of production budgets estimated to be comfortably north of $1 billion, a new Grand Theft Auto could be built in a cave with a box of scraps – which is to say, developed in a few years by under 100 people on a reported budget of $10 million.

In the final run-up to GTA 6, a harrowing fact has struck the Grand Theft Auto community. Reshared online by veteran game developer Del Walker of Naughty Dog and Respawn fame, an archived news story from USA Today in 2006 notes that GTA: San Andreas had sold over 12 million copies roughly 16 months after its October 2004 launch. If you (somewhat generously) assume that all of those sales were made at the game's $50 base price, that comes to about $600 million.

This figure was widely reported in the storm of coverage orbiting San Andreas' famous "Hot Coffee" incident, appearing in other articles (like this one from NBC News) that are still listed today.

Another figure helps put that gross revenue – which wouldn't translate directly to Rockstar or publisher Take-Two Interactive's share – into context. GTA: San Andreas was made on a reported budget of roughly $10 million, and we have two solid sources for that.

A December 21, 2004 article from The Wall Street Journal (paywalled) is cited by Wikipedia and references a $10 million budget for the game. Accounting for inflation, $10 million in 2004 is worth about $18 million in today's money.

An issue of The Ottawa Citizen, an Ontario, Canada-based newspaper, was released on the same day and is also archived online (again, paywalled), with a relevant snippet pulled out and cited by the GTA Fandom wiki. It quotes then-Take-Two president Paul Eibeler, who left the publisher in 2007, as saying San Andreas was made with a budget of "less than $10 million."

It's fascinating to see this $10 million figure in conversation, because this cost threshold has recently been used as a soft reference point for what AA game development can look like – a mid-sized, responsibly budgeted and scoped game that punches above its weight, and a potential retreat for studios worn down by the boom-and-bust bets of today's AAA games.

Today, GTA represents the pinnacle of high-budget development, the kind of swing that only GTA can get away with, and the kind of game that only Rockstar can make at this scale and fidelity thanks to its pedigree, backing, and army of employees (and outsourced contributors). Oh, and GTA 6 costs $100 if you want everything in it – that'd be the Ultimate Edition – or $80 at base, which has become the new price ceiling for some AAA games.

As Walker puts it: "Finding out San Andreas cost like $10 mil to make, and made back $600 million without DLC, multiplayer or microtransactions, is like watching someone dunk barefoot." Meanwhile, the lion's share of GTA 5's ample profits were harvested through GTA Online monetization over several years. If anything, GTA 6 is first and foremost a platform for Rockstar's next big online component.

The most prominent touchstone here is probably Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, a breakout turn-based RPG from Sandfall Interactive, a small French developer made up of mostly junior staff. Its budget was also under $10 million, just to put into perspective how much game development costs have exploded in 20 years.

Before, that kind of money could get you a new Grand Theft Auto. Now it's, well, certainly not chump change, but it's a rounding error to GTA, which is as good a cipher. And today, large publishers, and the smaller companies treading water in the same industry's financial currents, are reckoning with those costs, in part by laying off thousands of people as a lot of those bets lose.

The kicker is that the controversy that spawned much of this reporting, which orbited a January 2006 lawsuit filed by the Los Angeles city attorney office and accusing Rockstar of concealing pornographic content in GTA: San Andreas (sex scenes accessible only by modders), may have impacted its sales due to retailers pulling the game from shelves. Being removed from stores certainly makes it hard to sell a game, but equally, you might argue that the Hot Coffee notoriety only fueled sales before and after the brief disappearance from retail.

As it happens, that 2004 newspaper article also contains a prophetic quote regarding game development budgets. A Microsoft spokeswoman discussing the cost of Halo 2 comments on the, even then, rising budgets of games. (According to a July 2015 presentation from Microsoft veteran Chip Pedersen, Halo 2 cost $40 million to make and another $80 million to market. I shudder to think what Take-Two has spent marketing GTA 6.)

"The costs to create stellar games continue to increase, but we are looking at ways to help the industry streamline rising costs," she said. I don't know who this woman is or where she is now, but I hope she understands just how right she was.

For 5 days, this PlayStation Store credit deal brings GTA 6's $100 Ultimate Edition down to the price of a normal game.

PlayStation users can get $100 in PSN store credit for $80 using a limited-time offer available to Costco members.

Costco is selling four $25 PlayStation Store gift cards for $79.99 with an exclusive membership discount, offering a solid 20% saving. This price will only show up to members who are signed in.

Each Costco member can only claim this deal twice, and it will only be available until Sunday, October 11 or "while supplies last." Once purchased, the digital download codes will be delivered by email and must be redeemed via the PlayStation Store.

With GTA 6 being the highest-profile game release of the year, fans of Rockstar's open-world games quickly clocked that this deal brings the price of the game's $100 Ultimate Edition down to the new normal $80 ceiling for normal AAA games, which GTA 6's standard edition shares.

It's still costly for one new game, but it's hard to save money on GTA 6 elsewhere, as Rockstar won't officially discount it for some time.

Provided you're already a Costco member and aren't the US government, this sort of digital markdown is about as close as you can get to printing money. However, with the basic gold star Costco membership going for $65 a year, joining now just for this deal doesn't math out. Whether the store's grocery and hotdog benefits are worth the price is up for you to decide.

This discount comes as Prime Day PS5 deals slash prices on a range of consoles and games that we've been tracking.

Here are the cheapest PlayStation Plus deals and membership prices.

GTA 6's upcoming release is set to dominate November, with most other games fleeing from its enormous shadow, but it does have one major opponent in the form of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake. One expert goes as far as to say Nintendo is "the only company in the industry with a fanbase loyal enough to make that bet."

The GTA 6 and Ocarina of Time remake rivalry was the topic of a Saturday Night Live (SNL) sketch from a few days ago, in which the show fails to make Zelda sound boring and seemingly wasn't expecting the crowd to react more excitedly about Link's adventures in Hyrule than Rockstar's upcoming blockbuster. Oops. That aside, it still makes a valid point about the two wildly different games having a sort-of-Barbenheimer moment next month (two weeks apart, but still), and one expert has weighed in on the matter.

Aakash Gupta served as a leader of product growth at multiple companies, as well as a Fortnite producer at Epic Games, and "spent a decade in product and growth," now writing "deep dives on product strategy." In a lengthy new post on Twitter, he discusses the "game of chicken" that comes with working out release date calendars.

"GTA 6 is so big that every major game publisher evacuated November. Except Nintendo, who scheduled a remake of the highest-rated game ever made, a 99 on Metacritic, two weeks in front of it," Gupta begins.

"The money explains the evacuation. GTA 5 made $1 billion in 3 days back in 2013, faster than any movie, album, or anything else ever sold. DFC Intelligence projects GTA 6 clears $3.2 billion in year one," he continues. "For scale, Hollywood's biggest release of 2024, Inside Out 2, grossed $1.7 billion across its entire worldwide run. One game, one year, double that."

Gupta says that "Call of Duty retreated to late October," although it should be noted that even though GTA 6 certainly will have been on Activision's mind (how could it not be?), Modern Warfare 4's release date isn't particularly unusual. While the yearly CoD releases often arrive in November, we've seen them arrive in October before, too – just look at Black Ops 6 and 2022's Modern Warfare 2 to name a couple. Similarly, while he says that "Phantom Blade Zero moved," it was actually delayed from early September to late October – still missing GTA 6, but actually arriving closer to Rockstar's launch.

Even so, he's right to point out that "the rest of the schedule crowded into September and October and left November a ghost town with two names on it." We're currently in the midst of one of the busiest release schedules in recent memory, with the likes of Marvel's Wolverine, Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave, Control Resonant, Silent Hill: Townfall, and The Witcher 3 Remastered all having launched in the last few weeks, with more, including Final Fantasy Resonance and Switch Sports Resort, to come.

"I watched this dynamic from inside Epic Games," Gupta says. "Release calendars are a game of chicken, and when the biggest truck on the road picks a lane, everyone else swerves.

"Nintendo didn't swerve. The math is clean. GTA 6 doesn't run on their hardware, the audiences barely overlap, and a remake of the best-reviewed game in history gets two full weeks of oxygen before the asteroid lands," he continues. "They're the only company in the industry with a fanbase loyal enough to make that bet."

As for the outcome of this rivalry, Gupta suggests that "the crowd cheering louder for Zelda than the punchlines tells you how this ends." He adds: "The biggest entertainment event of the decade is a video game launch, and SNL just went where the audience already is."

It'll be interesting to see how things shake out, but again, Ocarina of Time does at least have two weeks before GTA 6 rocks up and grabs the full attention of the industry. Reacting to the Zelda remake's release date previously, Krysta Yang, former PR manager for Nintendo of America, said she thought it was "great," because "if it happened, where this was on the same day as GTA, and I saw that this was a faithful remake, I would be playing GTA."

GTA 6 boss says Rockstar has to "forego realism" for the sake of the players: "Realism can help greatly with immersion, but too much can feel tedious."

GTA 6 protagonist Jason might be a former army man, but the game's narrative lead insists that doesn't mean Rockstar was trying to make "a statement" with his backstory.

Rockstar previously introduced Jason as a man who "grew up around grifters and crooks" and spent "a stint in the Army trying to shake off his troubled teens" before returning to "doing what he knows best, working for local drug runners." Then, of course, he meets fellow GTA 6 protagonist Lucia, which "could be the best or worst thing to ever happen to him" – a slightly ominous descriptor we'll have to wait and see the outcome of next month.

Concerns for Jason and Lucia's happy ending aside, during a new interview with Love magazine, Rupert Humphries, GTA 6's senior vice president of narrative, is asked about Jason's backstory. Specifically, could it be interpreted as a class story, considering his time in the army, and how consciously has Rockstar written failed social mobility as an aspect of his tale?

"We didn't want to make any kind of statement with Jason's backstory," Humphries responds. "It needs to be understood that he takes the measures he does – drug trafficking and becoming a bank robber, etc. – because of his material circumstances. But a lot of this is up to the player to decide whether he needs to do that, or if it's a choice he makes because he's wired differently from other people."

It's a surprising response, largely because it seems to imply that Jason's military background might not figure all that much in the narrative, though I suppose we'll have to watch this space to see how it plays out, and how much the devs are hiding for spoiler purposes right now.

Rockstar obviously also hasn't shied away from social commentary in the past, either. In fact, in this same interview, before being asked about Jason's backstory, Humphries discusses the concept of the American Dream being a recurring theme in the GTA series, including in GTA 4 where "we told an immigrant's story that was supposed to be a kind of hollow commentary on the illusion of America as a land of opportunity, and then we sort of doubled down on that with the cynicism of GTA 5."

GTA 6 boss says Rockstar has to "forego realism" for the sake of the players: "Realism can help greatly with immersion, but too much can feel tedious."

Rockstar Games might have gained a reputation for making realistic games, but the devs behind GTA 6 sometimes have to "forego realism" for the sake of the player experience, says Rob Nelson, co-studio head of Rockstar North.

In a new interview with Love magazine, Nelson discusses GTA 6's balance between realism and immersion, noting that Rockstar's goal is the latter and that realism doesn't always help achieve it.

"Sometimes you need things to feel realistic to help with that sense of immersion, and conversely, sometimes you need to forego realism in favor of what will be most convenient for the player – realism can help greatly with immersion, but too much can feel tedious, so we try to find the right balance," he explains.

"Sometimes drawing an amusing or poignant parallel to some aspect of the real world is helpful in supporting the experience, and sometimes it's better to ignore or omit certain aspects of reality because they just don't make sense with the experience we are trying to create," he continues. "Everything we do is done to support the sense of being immersed in a world, connecting to its characters and the narrative we are weaving through it."

The irony of this statement is that GTA 6 is introducing a refueling system that's already proving controversial since – you guessed it – fans are worried it'll feel tedious. Nelson previously suggested that the refueling quick-time event is so quick that "you can't complain," but even so, he noted that "we'll see what people say."

After all, Rockstar already removed a mechanic from GTA 6 that would have seen you buying groceries and restocking Jason and Lucia's fridge, but "because this would have complicated the mechanics, we had to simplify it," Nelson explained at the time. He then reiterated: "We are always trying to find the right balance between realism and ease of play."

GTA 6 has "detailed decapitation" and cocaine can be "snorted directly" from your hand, says UK ratings board.

Rockstar co-founder and former lead writer Dan Houser thinks, in some ways, there's "no greater compliment" than being compared to his best Grand Theft Auto games. At the same time, he hopes his new projects at Absurd Ventures can hold up on their own.

After leaving the famed open-world developer in 2020, Dan Houser opened his own studio called Absurd Ventures that's now working on a number of multimedia projects, alongside a couple of games - at least one of which is another open-world romp. But the shadow of GTA still follows him.

"In terms of will I always be compared to it? I don’t know," Houser says in an interview with Variety. "I mean, hopefully, on some level there could be no greater compliment. On another level, I hope some of the stuff we make is going to be successful in its own right. It's no problem to have made good things, but of course, if you make good things, if the new stuff's not as impactful, that's going to be disappointing in some ways. But it's still a privilege to make anything, otherwise you're just always drowning in your own previous creative work."

Despite the comparisons, Houser thinks his job is to "make things I'm proud of" rather than making things that are successful, which is probably the healthier way of thinking about a post-GTA career.

Still, working on maybe the biggest video game franchise of all wasn't a stress-free experience, either. "Certainly, there was a lot of pressure making any GTA game when I was on them," he explains. But he somewhat managed that pressure by developing games with "as much integrity as I can muster" and ultimately making something he can be proud of. "And does it feel fresh, new? And if that's the case, let the results fall where they may. And certainly, even with games at Rockstar that were not successful, I was proud of them if we'd done what I thought was a good job. And so that's going to be the same here. We can't sit there going, 'If it's not the biggest thing ever, I'm a failure.' Because then you've got to process either, I'm a failure, I'm a success — but it feels just the same. So the work is the creative work, not what the market thinks of it."

Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser is avoiding GTA 6 so it doesn't "distract or disrupt" his new games, including another open-world comedy

Rockstar Games co-founder and former lead writer on many a Grand Theft Auto game, Dan Houser is trying his best to avoid GTA 6 so it doesn't distract him from his own projects, including another open-world comedy in development at his new studio Absurd Ventures.

"I haven't seen it yet," Houser says of the biggest game of the year, in an interview with Variety. "I will try and avoid it because I always try and avoid stuff that's going to distract or disrupt me creatively. And given that I spend a large amount of time trying to make open-world games, and the rest of my conscious time trying to figure out innovative ways to market them, I don't need to see what other people are [doing]. I'm always trying to think about new ways of doing it, not sit there in some kind of comparison of what I would have done differently."

Houser's not singling out GTA, to be clear - he apparently doesn't play many open-world games at all these days, but I imagine seeing GTA 6 would be particularly distracting, considering how deeply he was involved in almost every single game in franchise's history.

His new company, Absurd Ventures, has multiple multi-media projects in the works. At least two of them are games. "One is an open-world comedy which is trying to really lean into comedy and character memory, and that we'll have more information on in the next few months," Houser says. The other is more of a "dystopian sci-fi about a video game development gone very wrong, and about a rogue AI that discovered sentience," he adds. "But unfortunately, it was made by two people that didn't like each other, so it doesn't like itself."

"It's a privilege to be tied to stuff that was really successful and to have worked in great teams with great people and do innovative new things," Houser goes on. "All we're trying to do now is do a version of that for this period, and try and do it in a new way and see if there's anything interesting we can say with new IP."

Earlier this year, Absurd Ventures revealed some of the cast list for its AAA "story-driven" open-world project, Absurdaverse, featuring stars from 30 Rock and Billions.

The power of GTA 6 marketing turns NBA goliath Miami Heat into the Vice City Heat for one game, involving an arena makeover, new kits, and, naturally, merch

GTA 6 has been given a PEGI 18 rating in the UK and Europe, unsurprisingly, but the very detailed description of the game's contents suggests an even more violent, sexually explicit game than you might expect from the notoriously violent, sexually explicit series.

Rockstar's upcoming behemoth has already been rated by the ESRB and other rating systems, but the PEGI rating specifically includes some incredibly juicy new details about the game. In providing a reason for the 18+ rating, the board says GTA 6 features "features strong graphic violence, strong sexual themes and use of illegal drugs." No surprise whatsoever. Sex, drugs, and violence are GTA's whole thing, its central themes, its promise to players. But if I were playing GTA 6 and suddenly someone's head got chopped off in graphic detail, I have to say I'd be a little surprised. But apparently, that's something that can happen in the game. "Violence is bloody with a high degree of realism, with certain weapons being able to cause greater damage such as detailed decapitation and dismemberment," reads the PEGI rating's description.

"Drug use is frequent and prominent with the player being able to partake in drug use with others and to use illegal drugs directly from their inventory," it says, adding, "Most notably, cocaine can be carried around by the player and snorted directly from their hand at any time." Again, I'm not surprised at all that drugs are featured prominently in GTA 6, but I wasn't expecting the player character to huff lines right from their hands. This game sounds wild.

"There are also strong sexual themes," reads the rating. ZzzZZZzzZZZzz. Strong sexual themes? That's not the GTA I know. But wait, the game also features "scenes of intercourse and occasional scenes of sexual fetishes," and "In various night clubs the player can also pay for private dances, during which, the game allows the player to move their hands onto the dancers' breasts and buttocks."

All joking aside, GTA 6 sounds like a wildly fun time based on this age rating description. Rockstar has long positioned its next game to be a sweeping evolution of the franchise, its biggest, most extravagant release ever, and the biggest video game release of all time by a variety of metrics. At first I was shocked by the level of detail presented by the age rating, but thinking more on it, these extremely mature features feel like a natural progression for a series that's always been defined by excess. November 19 is going to be one hell of a day.

Here's everything new we learned about GTA 6 this week after Rockstar revealed new details on the animals, activities, and weather in its sprawling open-world sandbox

Welcome back to GTA 6 O'Clock! This week, Daniel Dawkins and James Jarvis examine the biggest Grand Theft Auto 6 gameplay details. In case you somehow missed it, GTA 6 landed on the cover of Game Informer magazine – a moment Rockstar used to reveal new information surrounding the complexity of this open-world sandbox. There was also fresh detail on some of the activities you'll be able to participate in, and some of the distractions you'll be able to hunt down too.

DD and JJ also explore the value of the GTA 6 Collector's Edition boxset and consider the true scale of this long-awaited sequel. There's plenty more covered in this week's episode of GTA 6 O'Clock, so you'll want to click the play button above to jump right into the conversation. You can also head over to our YouTube channel to watch the latest episode there, or download an audio-only version via Spotify so that you can get the latest GTA 6 news while you're on the move.

And while you're here, you can also sign up to the official GTA 6 O'Clock Newsletter to get weekly insights delivered right to your inbox, and vote in our latest GTA 6 poll to make your voice heard on the game ahead of its release on November 19, 2026, for PS5 and Xbox Series X.

This week's GTA 6 quiz

Could any other video game publisher besides Rockstar get away with releasing a $400 collector's edition that doesn't even include a copy of the game? The answer to that question is, sadly, yes – probably they could in this day and age. Regardless, that's not the question we're here to ask you this week! Come one, let's hear it:

What to read next?

Good news if you're a fan of the NBA or cool novelty t-shirts, because Rockstar and the Miami Heart are partnering up for the release of GTA 6. On top of lighting up the team's venue and releasing a full merch line, there'll be "special activities" on game night ahead of the blockbuster sequel's launch.

It'll all kick off on November 18, the eve of Grand Theft Auto 6 finally becoming playable worldwide. The Miami Heat, to be dubbed the Vice City Heat for this occasion, are up against the Milwaukee Bucks at home, in the Kaseya Center.

The venue itself already has Vice City branding on it, as part of an extensive marketing campaign within Miami. Now, the court will be branded in "special Vice City hardwood" for the occasion, to make sure everyone watching knows exactly what's going on.

"Special activities" will be happening inside the venue and throughout the evening, rolling into GTA 6 unlocking stateside. No details are forthcoming, but we're instructed to keep a good lookout.

This is all touted as a "never-been-done-before event," and honestly, there are few launches I can think of that would even be able to pull this off. Halo 3, and a couple of the bigger Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty games are about it.

Major sports teams and venues aren't cheap when it comes to sponsorships. This is big. If you can't get to the Kaseya Center or watch live, you can partake through the line of Vice City merchandise. You can get t-shirts, crop tops and jumpers, though I have to say, as a regular concertgoer, $55 per shirt is a bit of a rip. At least arena tours have to contend with venue cuts and all the other expenses.

Anyway, they're there if you fancy looking through them. Go Heat!

GTA 6 age rating suggests a more explicit game than GTA 5, singling out "sex scenes" in a step up from Rockstar's last installment.

The Australian age rating for GTA 6 specifically lists "sex scenes" in its classification, suggesting it'll be more explicit than GTA 5 was.

Age ratings for GTA 6 have emerged, and naturally, it's gained the standard M for Mature in the US and a PEGI 18+ rating in the UK and Europe. And while these come with the standard expected descriptors of "blood and gore, intense violence, mature humor, nudity, strong language, strong sexual content, use of drugs and alcohol," Australia and New Zealand have used a more specific descriptor.

As users on the GTA subreddit have pointed out, the age rating for the Australian and New Zealand store pages both specify "Sex Scenes" as part of their "Restricted 18+" ratings. While sex has been a part of the series for some time – both through being able to hire sex workers in the game's open-world as well as in Trevor's introduction scene in GTA 5 featuring some GTA 4 characters – it's notable that GTA 5 only had a generic descriptor. Meanwhile, GTA: The Trilogy has "Sexual Activity Related To Incentives And Rewards" listed in Australia, while it's not even mentioned in New Zealand.

Since the story of GTA 6 revolves around a couple, it's somewhat expected that sex would be a part of the story, but with the specific descriptor, it seems like it may be a bit more explicit than we've seen from the series previously.

Given the GTA series has been subject to controversy near constantly, with the scrapped Hot Coffee minigame in GTA San Andreas being one of the most significant, we'll no doubt hear some uproar about this – with GTA 6 already a hot topic among Miami politicians. But in an era where we've commonly accepted sex scenes in TV and film, it really shouldn't be a big deal in GTA, either.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 lead wants GTA 6 to open the door to charging more for games.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 executive producer and Warhorse Studios co-founder Martin Klíma says that he doesn't get why GTA is so popular, but he's hoping GTA 6's success allows developers to raise the price of games across the board.

For the longest time, the assumption around GTA 6 was that Rockstar would be able to charge whatever it wanted for it, as people would show up thanks to the long wait and massive hype. While some were predicting the game could end up at a base price of $100, Rockstar instead opted to match the $80 mark that Nintendo introduced with Mario Kart World at the launch of the Switch 2 – which is still more than the standard, but not unprecedented.

Some developers, however, such as Wardogs lead Joe Brammer, argue that Rockstar should've been a trendsetter, because "games are too cheap." Speaking to PC Gamer, Klíma hopes "GTA will blaze the trail, and it will allow us to increase the cost." He adds that Rockstar is the only developer "who can afford, or who can dare, to increase the price of games, which I think is long overdue and also necessary for this business to survive."

Despite that hope, Klíma admits that the GTA series "doesn't appeal to me at all" and that "the reason why it is so popular—it beats me. It's something which I just fail to understand." While says he won't "be playing GTA 6 unless I'm somehow forced to," he's happy to praise it, saying, "it's really good that somebody is making these games that are really technologically marvels."

Of course, that's Rockstar. It and Nintendo are two of the developers with big enough fanbases that they can likely afford to charge that extra, but it doesn't mean everyone would be suddenly willing to pay $80 for every game. Perhaps there are better ways of making the industry more sustainable, like perhaps not giving CEOs huge bonuses after laying off the devs behind the games that earned them that bonus.

Proving Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2's authenticity, Warhorse's biggest fan hikes through Czechia "by foot" to make 3D maps of the RPG's historical locations.

We could be waiting quite some time to see another game as impactful as GTA 6, former PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida suggests, and it may even be on Rockstar itself to do it with GTA 7.

GTA 6 is quite easily one of, if not the single most hyped up game of all time, with immeasurable excitement from fans who've been waiting over 13 years since the last installment, and most devs and publishers fleeing as far from Rockstar Games' November launch as they can to avoid their games getting swallowed up and forgotten. Its impending release has seemingly influenced consoles going out of stock and being sold for ridiculous prices, and people are so excited that some have even been willing to spend $400 on a box of merch including, uh, a spoon. With all that, on top of years of fan discussion, wild theories, and speculation… it's kind of a lot.

Speaking in a new episode of The Verge's Vergecast (below), the former president of Sony Interactive Entertainment worldwide studios is asked if we're ever going to see another game like GTA 6 in the future.

"After 15 years, maybe GTA 7, we'll see," he laughs. That's not to say that he thinks Rockstar is the only studio capable, though.

"Or any of these companies from China, they might try to emulate or compete, because there will be [a] 15 year gap after GTA 6," he continues. "So no one should underestimate the power of these Chinese companies."

Honestly, the mere concept of GTA 7 and the inevitable build-up to that makes me feel dizzy when we've not yet reached GTA 6's launch – this year's launch feels mythical enough as it is. But who knows what a post GTA 6 world is going to look like? Out of its shadow, could we see similar levels of hype and impact for a Switch 2 version of Nintendogs? Perhaps not, but it'd be interesting to take the spotlight away from Rockstar for a while, at least.

GTA 6's weather is completely re-engineered from Red Dead Redemption 2, and it has hurricanes, rainbows, proper cloud formations and more.

GTA 6 marketing is really ramping up now as influencers are receiving packages of merch from Rockstar Games, and I've gotta say, it looks like they got a better deal than the fans paying $400 for those Collector's Boxes.

The package in question has been shown off by content creator TmarTn on YouTube (below), who says he received the mysterious box from Rockstar with no heads up from the devs. Contained within his box was a blue baseball cap with a pink Rockstar Games logo embroidered on the front, a t-shirt with the same "welcome to Vice City" design shown on the inside of the Collector's Box, some stickers, a blue and pink tote bag featuring the GTA 6 logo, and perhaps coolest of all, a Zippo lighter engraved with both the Rockstar and Vice City logos.

While similar in vibe to the merch included in the Collector's Box, a number of GTA fans are – rather expectedly – proclaiming that they'd rather have all this than what Rockstar is charging the general public $400 for. Let's face it, not everyone is bothered about owning a bright pink cartoon alligator statue (though some fans are already getting creative and 3D printing their own to avoid paying Rockstar's price).

"Better than the good times collection box they're selling us for €400," one writes on Twitter. "I WANT THAT MERCH, NOT THE SHIT WE GET IN THE COLLECTION BOX," reads another slightly more impassioned response.

Of course, it may end up being that Rockstar Games sells the merch being sent to creators separately at some point so fans can have their fill, too. If that wasn't already the plan, this is clearly going to provide proof that there's demand, anyway.

GTA 6's weather is completely re-engineered from Red Dead Redemption 2, and it has hurricanes, rainbows, proper cloud formations and more.

The small details have always been where Rockstar works the most magic, and GTA 6 will be no different. Besides anything else, the weather is going to be something to watch out for, since the whole system's been overhauled from what we saw in Red Dead Redemption 2.

In Game Informer, Owen Shepherd, the vice president of art for lighting and rendering at Rockstar, divulged some of what players can expect when roaming Leonida, and it won't all be sunshine and tans. You can encounter all sorts of conditions, ranging from high temperatures to rain, right through hurricanes, all handled by a system where actual cloud formations will be floating overhead.

The entire weather system's been re-done to allow for more dynamism and unpredictability than we've seen prior. Red Dead Redemption 2 is the closest example, and apparently this iteration goes beyond what you see as Arthur Morgan.

The wind and rain are the biggest examples. You'll see the former through people's hair and ripples in the water and the like - all the minute ways you'd notice a breeze yourself. There'll be updrafts and other more specific effects as well. Extreme conditions are possible too; large-scale storms can and will happen across the area.

For the rain, there are puddles, and realistic, persistent rainbows. The notion that I could be stepping away from a hazardous mission, covered in blood both literally and metaphorically, only to hop into my sports car and drive off toward a big ol' rainbow arching over the horizon is glorious. Pure Rockstar.

As with much of GTA 6, I'll need to see this all in motion to fully appreciate it. But it's starting to sound like the studio's managed to outdo itself here. That's what 13 years of development will do.

Police arrest "one of the alleged leaders" of group behind Rockstar hack that apparently revealed how much money GTA Online makes, FBI warns "we know how to find you"

The FBI has confirmed the arrest of "one of the alleged leaders" of cybercrime and hacking group ShinyHunters – the group that claimed responsibility for a Rockstar Games hack earlier this year.

As reported by Reuters, earlier this week, Dutch police announced that they arrested a 24-year-old man from Amsterdam on September 15 who's suspected of being part of the group. In a statement, the FBI's cyber division assistant director, Brett Leatherman, refers to the man as "one of the alleged leaders of ShinyHunters," saying: "Since last year, this cybercriminal and his co-conspirators have allegedly breached more than 140 organizations and taken at least $70 million in extortion payments."

One of those organizations is allegedly GTA 6 maker Rockstar Games – ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for a hack which took place in April this year. At that point, Rockstar stated: "We can confirm that a limited amount of non-material company information was accessed in connection with a third-party data breach. This incident has no impact on our organization or our players."

This breach shouldn't be confused with the September 2022 GTA 6 leak, nor the Cyberleek leaks that emerged last month. However, it did seemingly reveal alleged financial records, including the apparent weekly revenue earned by GTA Online.

More recently, ShinyHunters claimed to have stolen information from the FBI (thanks, BBC), allegedly including data on most agents at the organization, Reuters reported last week – notably after the arrest of the 24-year-old.

Leatherman also shares a message for anyone involved with ShinyHunters, encouraging them to come forward. "You've heard about the arrest of your colleague. We're confident you've seen or heard things in recent days that the public has not. Other groups believed anonymity, or their friends, would protect them, and they were wrong," he states.

"Arrests have a way of changing who is willing to talk, and seized infrastructure has a way of showing us who's left. The longer you stay in this, the more we learn about you. You know how to find us, and we know how to find you. I suggest you reach out first while the choice is still yours."

In a statement seen by Reuters, however, ShinyHunters claims that the man arrested has "no association" with the hacking group, and allegedly criticizes the competence of the Dutch police force.

GTA 6's $1 million billboard goes up despite protests from local police as Rockstar's real-life Miami takeover gets underway.

You've heard it said before that GTA 6 is expected to be the largest entertainment launch of all time in terms of budget and sales, but it really is hard to oversell the unprecedented scale of Rockstar's incoming juggernaut. Publisher Take-Two Interactive has likely spent an ungodly amount of money GTA 6, and if the finished product is anything less than a total disaster, you'll see that money reflected in its photorealistic, richly detailed visuals, gigantic open-world map, and lifelike physics. That said, making the biggest game ever comes with proportionately seismic expectations, and Rockstar isn't content with simply meeting them.

"As the pressure for us on this project is huge, we dealt with that by doing our best to overdeliver," Rockstar's head of development and co-studio head Aaron Garbut tells Game Informer. "Normally you compromise scale for detail or detail for interaction, but with this project we went the other way – everything is dialed up – detail, scope, breadth, scale, interaction and density. I don't think we have ever created anything close to this before."

Of course, it's worth acknowledging the extremely talented people at Rockstar who don't need boatloads of cash to tell compelling stories or design interesting worlds, but the technical achievement Garbut is teasing here wouldn't be possible without Take-Two money. We've yet to see what the game looks like on our living room screens or how it feels in the hands at launch, but Rockstar certainly isn't doing much to temper expectations ahead of the game's November 19 launch; instead, it's doubling down in the final weeks of pre-release build-up with a reminder that there are very few studios in the world with its pedigree, talent, and resources.

GTA 6 devs spent years "going to strip clubs," "spending time on the beach," and riding with ex-cops to research Florida life

Game development is a hard, often thankless job, where devs spend years working extreme hours while pouring their hearts into their craft, and they're often repaid with little more than a pat on the back ahead of the next round of mass layoffs. I say all this to suggest you shouldn't judge Rockstar too hard for its regular GTA 6 research trips in Florida, which saw the devs soaking up the sun and the nightlife in equal measure.

"We go and try to experience everything," senior vice president of narrative Rupert Humphries tells Game Informer, "from riding around areas at night with ex-cops, to going to strip clubs and nightclubs, spending time on the beach, in the Everglades, down in the Keys, and beyond." The team has taken a multitude of such trips for reference material over the years.

Rockstar has a number of subsidiaries based all over the world, but GTA's development is led by Rockstar North in Edinburgh, Scotland, and I have to imagine some of those devs appreciated a little extra sunlight. But honestly? Going clubbing as a work activity sounds like a recipe for a bad time.

And either way, there are plenty of locations outside of the beaches and nightlife, and the game's story will drag Jason and Lucia through many of them. "We don’t have time to take you everywhere, but we want you to be able to explore and get a feel for most of the places, cultures, and vibes," Humphries says. "This game and its stories really thrive in an environment where you have rich people and poor people right next door to each other. And crime and corruption is the thread that pulls everyone together."

Plenty of game studios go on research trips – the American Truck Simulator devs even had to make a stop in my dinky hometown at one point – but the fact that the real-life inspirations behind Leonida and Vice City are such tourist destinations and nightlife hubs does make these particular trips seem a little more enviable than most. But personally, as a resident of Missouri, I get my fill of suffocating heat and humidity six months out of the year without having to meet any Florida men.

Here are all the GTA 6 locations we've learned about so far.

As the wait for GTA 6 presses on, fans of Rockstar Games' beloved franchise are finding new ways to breathe life into older entries like GTA 5 – for instance by, uh, unofficially porting it to Nintendo's original Switch console.

Or, at least, attempting to. Paralympics Productions, a self-described "very serious game development studio" (yes, heavy on the sarcasm), has been working on a Switch port of GTA 5 for some time now, officially unveiling its release back in August on X.

Things have been relatively quiet – too quiet, perhaps – since, even after Rockstar cracked down on with strict new modding and porting guidelines earlier this month.

These guidelines made it clear that the studio doesn't allow ports of its games, reading, "Do not modify our games to operate on consoles, hardware devices, or other platforms where they have not been officially released by Rockstar Games."

So, in other words, Paralympics Productions' Switch port is a no-no… and Rockstar's parent company Take-Two Interactive has finally noticed it, with project lead "Mojso" admitting as much.

"Paralympics Productions is shutting down on October 3rd," he writes in a new post. "Thank you everyone who supported us through tough times and lengthy development. I am sorry for not fulfilling your expectations and leaving you high and dry."

There you have it – GTA 5 devs caught the project-in-progress and have effectively axed it… but, as Mojso says, they could've been more harsh with their legal action.

"I am thankful for Take-Two's mercy so this is the definitive end," he admits. In other words, Take-Two didn't pursue a full-on lawsuit, it appears, perhaps opting for a warning and takedown order instead.

Mojso seems pleased with that, at least, stating in a response that he "wouldn't win in court most likely" as Rockstar has "solid grounds" and his attitude means he "can't even appeal to a jury or something like I didn't know what I was getting into."

He also explains that the port "was gonna release in the coming days" and "I wish Take-Two gave me more time," but it's all a bit too late now. And, no, he's "not releasing anything new and I'm not coming back."

As Mojso confirms, "it's truly over." It's disappointing for Switch enthusiasts and GTA 5 stans alike, but it's not exactly surprising. This isn't the first time a port was considered by eager modders, either.

GTA 5 modders got the game running on the Nintendo Switch way back in 2024 after the game's source code first leaked, so… yeah. I'm not sure it'll ever quite work out the way that fans hope, especially considering Rockstar's recent guideline changes.

GTA 6 fans replicate the $400 Collector's Box statue, and you can now 3D print your own ugly gator at home

Rather than pay $400 for the GTA 6 Collector's Box to get it, fans are now downloading and 3D printing the ugly alligator figure included in the bundle.

Rockstar Games releases are usually pretty popular, and there's no doubt that it'll sell a ton of copies the second it releases GTA 6 (or anything else) to the public. And with that sort of guaranteed success, it probably makes sense to drop an expensive collector's edition of the game for those who really want to go all-out for it, but uhh… a $400 box that doesn't include the game is probably not the most appealing prospect for many. So much so that scalpers were struggling to get one over on people at first, with the box remaining in stock for a decent amount of time.

And I can't really say I blame them. It's one thing to drop a massively expensive collector's edition, it's another to not include the game, but on top of that, it mostly feels like tat. One of the centerpiece items is a figurine of in-game TV show mascot Macca the Gator, who is a bright pink alligator in a blue shirt holding a blunt and a martini. It's pretty ugly, and feels like the type of thing Rockstar would intentionally make ugly as a commentary on tacky mascot characters.

But despite it being a certified uggo, clearly some people want it and now that the GTA 6 collector's edition has somehow sold out. Rather than pay $400 or pay for a scalper however, some are already coming up with other means to get their Macca fix. As highlighted by Twitter user Top5Gamingx, someone has already recreated the ugly reptile as a 3D model for people to 3D print in their own free time.

Of course, you'd need to own a 3D printer, pay for the filament needed to print it, potentially paint it, and then have to deal with an ugly gator figure in your vicinity. But it's the thought that counts!

Rockstar reportedly reminded GTA 6's voice cast they're still under NDA after actor Stephen Root let slip he's in the game.

After years of waiting, we finally got a glimpse of the crime-ridden and hedonistic Vice City and fictional state of Leonida during 2023's hotly anticipated reveal trailer for GTA 6.

The trailer soon made a Guinness World Record as the most-viewed video game reveal on YouTube in 24 hours, with over 90 million views.

Alongside the chaos and carnage, 'Love Is a Long Road' by Tom Petty played in the background, with the fast-paced tempo of the rock song mirroring the high-octane action in the trailer.

The trailer left fans in a frenzy. However, it also had an unexpected impact on bringing Tom Petty’s song to a new generation and achieving a mainstream popularity that it hadn’t reached before.

The song saw close to 400K streams in the days following the reveal trailer, a huge jump from the 4-5K streams it averaged before. Spotify also later reported a 37,000% increase in global streams, while the song was also Shazamed nearly a quarter of a million times, cracking the global top 20.

The second trailer proved just as influential, as the backing track, 'Hot Together' by The Pointer Sisters, saw a 182,000% spike in streams.

Advertising creative Sir John Hegarty once said: “Taste isn’t just about following the public; it’s something advertising can actively set.”

As a result of the popularity of the GTA franchise, Rockstar Games has been able to adopt this ethos and shape the cultural landscape through music, becoming one of the most influential tastemakers in the industry.

Turn on, tune in

Rockstar Games is able to effectively shape the musical landscape by carefully curating a soundtrack that mirrors the open world players are immersed in. The radio stations featured popular classic hits such as 'West End Girls' by Pet Shop Boys, but also brought obscure songs such as 'El Sonidito' by Hechizeros Band and 'The Set Up' by Favored Nations to a new global audience.

Take GTA 5 and GTA Online: By 2018, gamers had listened to more than an estimated 75 billion minutes of music across its radio stations.

With 18.3 million monthly active users throughout 2025, GTA is able to have a long-term impact on shaping culture and constantly introduce artists to a new audience. With GTA radio, the experience becomes more interactive as you actively engage by selecting the station, and this helps strengthen that bond between the player and the song, evoking certain emotions and nostalgia.

This is a new experience from other musical tastemakers such as film soundtracks and adverts, as they primarily allow you to passively listen and interact with the music. However, film trailers have also had a big impact on reviving lesser-known songs from famous artists, in a similar way to Rockstar Games with GTA. For example, when Nirvana’s 'Something in the Way' featured in The Batman’s trailers and film, it saw a 1,200% increase in Spotify streams. Before the release of The Batman on March 4, daily streaming figures for the song were 123,000. However, these climbed significantly to 1.6 million on March 8.

One of the artists who felt the impact of being included on GTA 5 was American rapper Ab-Soul with his song "ILLuminate" (featuring Kendrick Lamar) featured on Radio Los Santos.

“The impact was tremendous! Especially considering that my style is unconventional for west coast radio. It allowed me to remain comfortable in my skin as an artist and continue to grow, unapologetically. I felt it immediately,” said Ab-Soul.

He added: “Being that GTA is culturally stamped and globally influential, having a hand in the game etches you in history. Point blank. I’d go as far as saying, every song featured on the radio can be considered timeless solely off of the strength. My long-term goal is to be long-term. Period. It doesn’t get any more long-term than timeless.”

Another popular song on GTA 5 was Modjo’s “Lady (Hear Me Tonight).” It perfectly captured the vibe of Los Santos as you put on Non Stop Pop FM and speed through the sun-drenched city.

Despite the French house music duo’s 2001 song already being a big hit in the UK, reaching No. 1 and being certified Platinum, its inclusion on GTA radio helped introduce it to a whole new generation.

One half of the duo, Romain Tranchart, believes the popularity of Modjo’s song was indicative of the changing landscape of open-world video games as they include radios, TVs and nightclubs. However, he also remarked that the success was also “a generational thing.”

He added: “A lot of the video games and GTA players are young, and many of them were not born in 2000 when Lady (Hear Me Tonight) was released. If you take a look at the YouTube comments under our music video, the bond between the song and this iconic video game is obvious.”

In 2023, GTA 5 set the record for the most licensed songs in a GTA game with 777. However, there has been some controversy in the past about the remuneration artists receive for licensing.

In September 2024, Martyn Ware from Heaven 17 alleged that Rockstar approached the band to license their 1983 hit “Temptation.” The band were offered $22,500 in total for the three songwriters in exchange for a buyout covering future royalties from the song’s use.

The British synth-pop band swiftly told the studio to “go fuck yourself” as they believed the payment was too small in comparison to the commercial success of the video game.

Rockstar Games have proven over the years that it is a behemoth promotional machine, with a huge built-in audience and exposure to hundreds of millions of users. Speaking of which – it's almost time to roll down the window and cruise through Vice City ourselves.

Whilst legendary artists such as George Michael, Billy Idol, Oasis and Cyndi Lauper are expected to be included in the soundtrack, expect Rockstar to continue spotlighting lesser-known artists and songs; using its platform to shape pop culture for years to come.

Room for one more Saturday Read? The disc is dying, but the box isn’t – what will a "physical game" actually mean in 2030?

Rockstar Games has supposedly reminded the GTA 6 voice cast to keep quiet about their involvement in the upcoming open-world epic - shortly after actor Stephen Root let slip that he's in the game.

The Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption maker has slowly been revealing bits and pieces about its next crime romp. The developer recently unveiled the GTA 6 soundtrack featuring 34 original songs from popular, real-world artists, as well as a $400 Collector's Edition that doesn't actually include the game. But it's been keeping a tight lid on whoever's voicing Lucia, Jason and every other character in Leonida.

As reported by Insider Gaming, the normally reliable GTAVIoclock podcast claimed that Rockstar Games recently contacted its voice cast to tell them to remain hush-hush about the project: "We would like to remind everyone to please remember your NDA. The date you may announce your involvement is still November 19th."

This comes just weeks after Stephen Root (Barry, King of the Hill, Get Out) confirmed that he is, in fact, playing a character in the game. Root didn't specify who he's depicting, exactly, but fans spotted his voice in one of GTA 6's very first trailers when drug-pusher Brain Heder began talking.

Rockstar's no stranger to casting celebrities in its Grand Theft Auto games - everyone from Samuel L. Jackson to Ray Liotta can be heard in the studio's blockbuster games - so, maybe the company wants to keep a few famous surprises held for November 19.

Bringing GTA 6 to Nintendo Switch 2 "doesn't make sense" when "anyone will buy a PS5 to get your game," says former Rockstar dev

Plenty of developers have shuffled around their release dates to avoid brushing shoulders with GTA 6, which is shaping up to be the biggest video game launch of all time. But publisher Hooded Horse isn't worried about releasing its medieval management sim Blacksmith Master into 1.0 on November 19 - in fact, it's apparently a deliberate strategy.

The Manor Lords publisher is gearing up to push Blacksmith Master out of the early access fire on the same day as Rockstar Games' mammoth open-world romp. To most other companies, that's a recipe for disaster. To Hooded Horse, it's no biggie.

"Aren't we worried about GTA releasing the same day? But actually it's a strategy -- people looking to steal cars and gun down their enemies searching for a PC release will instead discover they actually want to control little dudes hammering horseshoes," Hooded Horse CEO Tim Bender wrote in a recent LinkedIn post.

"Jokes aside, GTA will have absolutely no effect on Blacksmith Master's release," he added. "No harm at all. Indie devs are too worried about launching around this or that big game. Sure, don't launch your AAA console-focused action-adventure on Nov 19, but otherwise no reason to worry."

GTA 6's launch pushed plenty of big name games out of the normally very busy November period. Look at our new games calendar and you'll see lots of blockbuster games tightly crammed into September, sometimes with a few days between each of them. Even the Fable reboot's director recently implied that GTA was responsible for its delay into next year.

While avoiding the big behemoth in the room, too many video games probably moved right next to their direct competition. Perhaps cozy medieval management games about running a smithy and forging war tools don't need to hide away - we'll find out how Blacksmith Master does when it hits 1.0 on Steam.

Bringing GTA 6 to Nintendo Switch 2 "doesn't make sense" when "anyone will buy a PS5 to get your game," says former Rockstar dev

There are two platforms notably absent from GTA 6's release. First, you have PC, which will inevitably happen within the first year or two, and then there's the Switch 2. Although no entries in the hyper-violent series have made it to Nintendo's systems yet, this would be a good time to set a precedent given the mutual popularity, but an ex developer from Rockstar sees it differently.

Speaking to Kiwi Talkz in a currently private interview, Jérémy Hartvick, a former open world designer at Rockstar who worked on GTA 6 from 2017 through to 2020, explains why he doesn't see a port happening. "I don't believe it even makes sense, because I'm not sure the audience for GTA 6 is so much the audience for the Switch," he starts.

"If you're a GTA fan, you would probably buy a console on which GTA will come out," he adds. The logic is fair – if you were hoping to get the new Grand Theft Auto, you probably opted for a PlayStation 5 or an Xbox Series X to begin with.

Sales for both jumped up on the back of the Netflix preview. Fans generally seem to understand and accept that if they want to play GTA 6 as soon as possible, there are only two options for doing so.

Nintendo exists in its own lane, because if you want new Mario, Zelda or Kirby games, you need a Switch 2. There are probably people who only have the hybrid platform who wouldn't mind checking out GTA 6, but I'd be willing to bet it's a minority overall.

"Does it make sense for you to go out of your way to probably deliver a subpar experience, because it does not run exactly the same when you know anyone will buy a PS5 to get your game?" he asks, rhetorically, but providing the obvious answer anyway: "No."

This is the other half of the equation. Such a large release would need to be boiled down and optimized for the Switch 2's hardware. That's a lot of extra labor for something that's already manpower intensive, for potentially spurious rewards comparatively. Hartvick does mention the notion isn't "totally ludicrous," but for the time-being, don't count on it.

GTA 6 scalpers are already trying to resell Rockstar's $400 Collector's Box for upwards of $1,500, even though it's still in stock.

As the GTA 6 release quickly approaches with November right around the corner now, folks ponder whether or not the $400 Collector's Box is worth its price – but scalpers aren't waiting around for them to decide, it appears.

In case you're out of the loop, yes, Grand Theft Auto 6 has a $400 Collector's Box (one that does not include the game itself, mind you), featuring everything from a six-inch alligator figure to a, erm, collectible spoon, up for pre-order right now over on the official Rockstar Games website.

It's not out of stock by any means – understandably, considering its hefty price tag – but that's not stopping scalpers from attempting to resell it already.

A quick look over at eBay, arguably eager resellers' favorite storefront, shows the GTA 6 Collector's Box going for everything from $800 to upwards of $1,500. There aren't only a couple of listings, either. There's a plethora of them, and not one comes in at retail price, y'all. Not one.

There are a couple of more generous offers sitting at $600 – but, again, the dang thing is still in stock over on Rockstar's own site.

I feel like this is one of those situations in which scalpers won't emerge victorious, honestly. Not only is, as I've said multiple times now, the GTA 6 Collector's Box currently available to pre-order still, but I'm not sure it'll even go out of stock any time soon.

There are loads of posts all over the web from disappointed fans expressing that they're unwilling to shell out so much cash for a bundle that doesn't even contain the game it's based on.

A Reddit thread on the hopeful scalpers says it all, with one comment reading, "Honestly, if people buy these, the scalpers deserve that money." Another adds, "Yeah, I'll stick with just the game. $100 is enough" – because, yes, the Ultimate Edition of GTA 6 already costs a whopping hundred bucks (although I suppose it at least includes the heckin' game).

So, yep, I'm not feeling as though resellers are going to get too much out of this one.

Who knows, though – I could very well be wrong. This isn't the first time that scalpers have attempted to earn quite a lot more money than an item is worth, especially in the gaming sphere, and they do sadly often succeed.

Xbox is "very happy with GTA 6 pre-orders," exec says, claims sales match "our share of the console market."

It's probably safe to assume GTA 6 pre-orders are going well. Rockstar's new crime sandbox, some 13 years in the making, is set to be one of the biggest entertainment launches ever. However, a new report suggests the bulk of the purchases so far are on PlayStation 5, leaving the Xbox Series X version in the dust.

This comes from The Verge, where it's reported that GTA 6 has been pre-ordered much more on the PS5 than the Xbox Series X, compounding existing worries about Microsoft's games division. No percentages or other details are provided.

Matthew Ball, the chief strategy officer of Xbox, responds to the article on Twitter. "We are very happy with GTA 6 pre-orders," he says. "The title is breaking records for Xbox, we expect even more records will be broken throughout the fall, and our internal analysis shows our share of pre-orders to be matching our share of the console market."

To be fair, he would say all of that, the problem is a lot of it doesn't count for much. By "breaking records," I presume he means for overall pre-orders on the Xbox Series X, which seems extremely plausible since it's such a mammoth release. But competition isn't exactly stiff on the neon green system.

We haven't seen many big exclusives from the brand, and of those, lots have been pushed on Game Pass, making their pre-purchases and day one sales seem secondary. "Matching our share of the console market," is fine and dandy until you consider data that has the PS5 out-selling its rival by a pretty hefty portion.

Ball's own tweet has prompted barbs from analysts on the Xbox Series X's performance compared to the PS5. Circana analyst Mat Piscatella writes on Bluesky: "Given what the Xbox share of the console market is, not sure I'd be gushing about anything related to a relative split but that's just me."

Available numbers show Sony's machine boasting up to 80% of a multi-platform game's pre-orders on console. Microsoft has maintained the split on GTA 6 is less than that, but to what degree isn't shared.

The climate at Xbox is pretty bleak at the moment due to extensive restructuring and layoffs. We'll see how the dust settles in the coming months – and how well Rockstar's epic manages to sell.

GTA 6's $400 collectible spoon is actually a reference to another, far more expensive GTA spoon from 18 years ago.

You may have noticed Rockstar is shilling a GTA 6 Collector's Box at the moment. The contents include a double-sided poster, a statue of Macca the Gator, and the greatest prize of all, a Vice City-emblazoned spoon.

A swizzle spoon to be exact, the kind typically found in cocktail bars and pubs for mixing drinks. Decidedly appropriate for anyone preparing to jaunt around Leonida for hours and hours. It's be more charming if it wasn't part of a collection that costs $399.99, but that's another discussion.

There are other uses for a piece of cutlery such as this I won't get into, but suffice to say it's often used for more than just stirring appletinis. Funnily enough, this isn't the first time Rockstar's fancied itself a purveyor of hospitality wares, because a similar item was produced for The Ballad of Gay Tony.

Way back in 2008, the studio produced a limited run of promotional spoons for the DLC to GTA 4, because how else do you sell video games? It's the same kind of apparatus, just in gold instead of silver, and it comes with a logo for Ballad of Gay Tony.

If you'd like one to create a set, you're going to have to cough up much more than what Rockstar's charging. Now a collector's item, the Ballad of Gay Tony spoon goes for around thousands of dollars these days. I wish I was joking.

It's to be expected though, since it's an object associated with an extremely popular series that has extremely low supply. That much is too rich for me, but I've paid over the original cost on a few things over the years just because they scratched at the dedicated fan in me.

Anyway, if you're a speculative collector, it might be worth considering the GTA 6 box just for the spoon alone. In a decade's time, you'll be having the last laugh when you sell it on for a couple of grand. Capitalism.

GTA 6's $1 million billboard goes up despite protests from local police as Rockstar's real-life Miami takeover gets underway

You can expect a lot of GTA 6 merchandise from Rockstar, and the first windfall is coming quite soon. There aren't any physical versions of the game, but you can buy a spoon, designer sunglasses, a fanny pack, and select other goods – all in a massive bundle that'll cost you around four times the price of the game.

The Grand Theft Auto 6: The Goodtime State – Vice City Collection was just revealed by Rockstar, a merch capsule you can now pre-order from the official store. It's described as "a premium Grand Theft Auto 6 collectible set featuring all the essentials for a good time."

To be frank, I think we've different definitions of that last part, but how and ever. Contained is a figure of Macca the Gator, the aforementioned spoon, designer sunnies from Oakley, a crossbody bag, stickers, and a few other miscellaneous items. There's a double-sided map, which is probably the thing I desire most.

Everything comes emblazoned in some sort of logo, whether for Vice City or GTA 6 itself or Rockstar, and you can get the whole lot for $399.99, or £349.99 in Britain. Pre-orders are open, and right now, this is an all-in-one purchase. You can't buy anything on its own, at least not for the time-being.

You may balk at that price – you definitely won't be alone if you did – but the there are parts of this inflating the cost. The sunglasses generally go for around $200, and the manufacturing and weight of all the other merchandise will form the bones of that payment.

Still, it's a lot to ask, especially when you still need to buy the game separately, and don't even get a disc for the trouble. This drop was previously spotted through private store listings by a user known as Razed in a thread on unofficial message board GTAForums.

They noticed there are apparently shirts, tote bags, and more hats in the offing as well. Plenty of ways to give Rockstar your money before the crime sandbox arrives.

NBA star warns GTA 6 will ruin November sports because players and coaches will be too busy playing to train.

NBA star Steven Adams has warned that sports performance will take a major hit in November because everyone's going to be too busy playing GTA 6.

I don't think it's too hyperbolic to say GTA 6 is perhaps the most-anticipated game of all-time within the general public. Rockstar Games titles are always very popular, obviously, but the 13-year wait since GTA 5 released and went on to become one of the best-selling games ever made has made that anticipation a bit more feral. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick predicted earlier this year that "a lot of people will be calling in sick on November 19," while automotive manufacturer Burger Motorsports has already given all of its staff the day off when GTA 6 drops.

Adams – who plays for the Houston Rockets – spoke at the team's media day this week, and dropped an ominous warning. "I will say: You guys should anticipate November." (Thanks, Coming Soon!)

He notes, "GTA is dropping. So look at NFL, look at all the leagues and watch them plummet," adding, "Just for the month of November performance is gonna go down, it should come back up." You would assume coaches would have plans in place to make sure the teams focus on training, but Adams reckons the coaches will also be too busy playing GTA 6.

However, now that Adams has given this warning, I can imagine there's at least one team that will be looking to take advantage of this and train even harder in November. That, or teams will be keeping a closer eye on their players in a couple months to make sure GTA isn't affecting performance.

GTA 6's $1 million billboard goes up despite protests from local police as Rockstar's real-life Miami takeover gets underway.

GTA 6 is just two months away, and Rockstar is spinning up the marketing machine in a big way. The studio's proposition for a big money takeover of Miami, the real-life inspiration for the fictional Vice City, recently passed muster with local officials despite protests from some police members in the area. Now, fans are looking on as a $1 million billboard gets the marketing stunts underway.

A massive "welcome to Vice City" sign has been going up on the Kaseya Center, home of the Miami Heat basketball team, throughout the day. Social media has been awash in images and videos as pieces of the sign slowly get airlifted on top of the building. It's tough to tell if the sign is complete – it's currently facing straight up, so it's either built for air-view marketing or it's eventually going to be stood up and be seen from the ground – but it's already quite a spectacle.

Eager GTA fans have already been crowding around live city cam footage watching the sign go up all day, and it's big enough to make quite an impression even from a distance.

The Miami Herald reports that Miami-Dade county will collect $975,000 from this sign alone. The county is hosting the most "elaborate" displays for GTA 6, but other parts of the larger metropolitan area – including Miami Beach and the city of Miami itself – also have deals with Rockstar.

For its part, Rockstar hasn't said much about GTA 6 since the game's big Netflix debut, except to warn modders away from creating pretty much anything cool. Sure, Rockstar can reshape a real-life city in its image. But the game itself? That's sacred.

GTA 6 will not be eligible to complete Baldur's Gate 3 and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's 'Big 5' GOTY sweep in the 2026/7 season.

PATCH NOTES v09.22.2026 – GTA 6 developer Rockstar Games reiterated its modding guidelines and new monetization policy in the run up to the new Grand Theft Auto, further complicating its relationship with custom and user-generated content. This comes three years after Rockstar purchased the studio behind one of the most successful GTA 5 multiplayer mod frameworks, FiveM, after having first sought to shut the project down completely.

It felt like a win back then, but as GTA 6 looms on the horizon, has Rockstar just canceled all mods for its new game outright?

What's going on with GTA 6 this week?

• Rockstar Games shared its comprehensive modding rules ahead of GTA 6's November launch
• Guidelines forbid the expansion or modification of key characters, storylines, locations, and "other elements of our established continuity" across Rockstar's litany of games

Why is this happening now?

• Rockstar re-establishing its modding guidelines feels like a warning in the lead up to GTA 6
• The GTA studio's stance is an outlier among other major publishers that cultivate rather than stifle modding communities

Meta Shift

• Rockstar's modding guidelines state that monetized mods can only be bought and sold via "approved" storefronts

Most of Rockstar's mod guidelines spell out the demonstrably strict stance the studio has always taken on the matter. The one thing it does put in black and white for the first time, though, is that monetized mods can only be sold "via digital storefront providers approved by Rockstar Games" – likely via Cfx Marketplace. The platform serves as Rockstar's official one-stop shop for approved GTA 5 mods, and is an extension of the FiveM and RedM modding clients for GTA and Red Dead Redemption specifically.

Its very existence is telling. While some developers welcome free community mods as a natural part of a game's evolution, with Baldur's Gate 3 getting an internal client on top of full mod support, Rockstar's Cfx Marketplace platform gives the developer a cut of sales profits for all mods sold.

Publishers will always crack down on the unlawful buying and selling of mods, as this is tantamount to copyright infringement. But free game mods aren't inherently problematic as long as they stay free. It's why community mods were always not-for-profit in Simming communities, for example, until EA launched the Sims Marketplace this year and permitted content creators to sell their Sims 4 mods in exchange for a cut of the proceeds. This seems to be the case for anyone looking to monetize their Rockstar mods going forward – though thankfully, free mods are still very much out there.

There are other guidelines set out for modding in general, allegedly to protect the integrity and "official continuity" of Rockstar games. The rules remind us that Rockstar forbids the cross-pollination of its IPs (no more modding Arthur Morgan into San Andreas, kids), as well as platform modifications that reverse engineer games to be played on unsupported devices. This is especially pertinent to GTA 6, which is not set to release on PC when it launches on PS5 and Xbox Series X. Rockstar also refers back to its licensed creator platform, most likely FiveM, as being the only permitted way to make multiplayer mods. Which is ironic, considering how FiveM creator Cfx.re started off on the GTA publisher's hit list.

Known Issue

• Rockstar parent company Take-Two is known for taking swift litigious action against rulebreaking community mods, but it's folded to pressure before

Rockstar's modding rules have been heavily slammed by players on Twitter, with some calling them unenforceable "scare tactics". But there's a degree of mixed messaging, too. After threatening legal action against Cfx.re – the developer behind hyper-popular multiplayer mod FiveM that gave rise to robust GTA RP servers – Rockstar bought the studio outright in 2023. FiveM is now the official GTA 5 modkit, and all it took was cutting the developer in on its profits.

What I find interesting is that a lot of what GTA RP servers stand for – creating a deeper, more lived-in GTA multiplayer experience – may challenge a lot of Rockstar's stipulated rules. GTA RP allows players to revisit locations usually reserved for single missions in the fifth mainline game, for example, as well as creating more enterable houses on the map and letting players buy, sell, and decorate them. It's strange that, as a Rockstar-greenlit initiative that almost got shut down for being so good, GTA RP could be testing the limits of its own guidelines. But given how successful FiveM continues to be, I suppose exceptions can be made.

Patch Notes summary

• Modding Rockstar games is not illegal, but as always, be on your guard

If you're wondering what will happen to all your favorite single player offline Rockstar mods now that these guidelines have been outlined, the answer is… Probably nothing. Not yet, anyway. The rules serve as a reminder for players as GTA 6's launch date approaches, reiterating Rockstar's stance on how custom content should be made, used, and distributed by creators.

It's surfaced a lot of discourse all the same: does this mean that San Andreas mod Project Eagle, which seeks to put key classic GTA city locations in one huge open world map, is doomed? Has Rockstar just killed off GTA 6 mods before the game even launches? The jury's still out on both of those. But as long as you're not flogging mods without cutting the copyright holders in, these guidelines shouldn't raise any alarm bells.

Related stories

GTA 6 will not be eligible to match the records set by Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Baldur's Gate 3 by completing a sweep of all five major GOTY awards in the 2026/7 season.

The 44th Golden Joystick Awards were announced earlier today, confirming that this year's show will take place on November 11 – eight days before the GTA 6 release date of November 19. Public voting will begin on September 25 for most categories, ending on October 23, before voting for Ultimate Game of the Year runs from October 26-30. That's several weeks before the general public will get its hands on Rockstar's latest, which means it's not eligible for any of this year's awards.

Depending on exactly how you look at it, that means GTA 6 won't be eligible for a full awards sweep. Typically, the 'big five' GOTY awards season begins with the Golden Joysticks in November and ends with the BAFTAs in April, factoring in the Game Awards in December, February's DICE Awards, and March's GDC Awards. But with GTA not releasing until after the 2026 Golden Joystick ceremony, the sweep is out of its grasp.

GTA 6 will be eligible for the 2027 Joysticks, and should it win the biggest prize at The Game Awards you could argue it had still made a delayed sweep. But the record set by Baldur's Gate 3 and matched by Clair Obscur relied on winning the big five across a single awards season, and there's really no way that GTA would be able to do that.

If I were a betting man, I'd suggest that GTA 6 is likely to win all of those awards, even if it has to wait until November 2027. Assuming that comes to pass, you might argue that the sweep still stands, it was just a little late. Purists, however, might disagree, arguing that the only way to get a sweep is to win all five prizes in one go. One thing is for sure though - by the time the BAFTAs roll around next spring, Larian and Sandfall will remain the only studios to complete the sweep.

Ahead of GTA 6, Rockstar releases modding guidelines that axe new missions, maps, ports, and more: "Respect our games."

Although GTA 6 isn't here just yet, Rockstar Games is shaking things up for its community a bit ahead of the big game's release with some, um, very controversial new modding guidelines.

Yes, the same Rockstar that acquired GTA 5's downright massive roleplay mod framework, FiveM, just a few years ago – one that broke 200,000 players on Steam back in March. So, what exactly are the new modding guidelines… surely they can't be that restrictive, right? Wrong.

As per Rockstar's official webpage outlining the rules, they're restrictive and then some, to, you know, "maintain a fun, creative, and welcoming place for players and content creators."

The first rule starts with a very straightforward, "Respect our games." It continues: "Rockstar Games creates unique worlds, characters, and stories, which form the official continuity of our games. Like all creators, we have the right to set limits on how others can use our games and brand."

So, what are said limits? "Do not expand or modify Rockstar Games' official storylines, plots, missions, characters, or other elements of our established continuity."

That alone covers a lot, seeing as most mods do just that. Rockstar then adds, "Do not make mods that combine maps, locations, characters, storylines, in-game assets, or other IP from one Rockstar Games title into another title," which even further limits modders' potential.

I'm instantly reminded of the recent Red Dead Redemption 2 Mexico mod based on Rockstar's first game with new NPCs, towns, wildlife, and a lot more. What will come of it, and others like it? It's not looking good, that's for certain.

Rockstar also essentially prohibits ports of its games, solidifying that it's truly not messing around here: "Do not modify our games to operate on consoles, hardware devices, or other platforms where they have not been officially released by Rockstar Games." Oof.

Unsurprisingly, fans online are not happy with the new guidelines, from what I can see.

"Oh my god bro they went the path of the Nintendo," writes a user on Twitter. "No fun allowed basically," adds another – along with some choice language I'm sure you can envision without my recital here.

It does all beg the question of how GTA 6 modding will be affected in the future following its November 19 release, but I suppose we don't need to worry about any of that until it actually gets a PC launch… whenever that presumably comes.

New Rockstar leak allegedly reveals GTA 6 assets and cut GTA 5 Liberty City DLC, with nearly 200 GB of unseen content.

Grand Theft Auto VI: The Album feels like a lovely consolation prize. As a collector of all things gaming, my hopes were crushed when it was first unveiled that the game would be nothing more than a code in a box. Yet while my game shelf will be worse off, at least my record collection doesn't have to be, as the GTA 6 soundtrack is releasing physically on vinyl this November.

Grand Theft Auto VI: The Album is available to pre-order for $49.99 at Best Buy and is a 34-track, 2 LP gatefold set featuring a neat pink and purple splatter effect. The colors are perfectly suited for Vice City vibes of the series' upcoming installment, and are exclusive to Best Buy. While you can pre-order straight from Rockstar, the splatters are blue rather than purple. If you want to add something GTA 6-related that's actually physical, I highly recommend grabbing this Best Buy version before resellers do.

I'm genuinely surprised that any versions of the soundtrack are still available to pre-order, especially as fans seemed hungry for the official GTA 6 PS5 DualSense controllers. Exclusive record releases, particularly video game soundtracks, can be prime fodder for resellers to get their hands on and pop on the likes of eBay to make a profit, but fortunately that has yet to come to fruition.

I'd still recommend that both GTA and vinyl fans alike pick up a copy just in case that scenario becomes a reality. While the Best Buy version remains in stock, the liquid-filled copy of the record has already sold out at Rockstar's official online store. It included the same 34 tracks as the rest of them, but ditches the splatter effect for two transparent magenta discs filled with blue liquid.

That version is long gone and out of stock, and there's every chance that could happen to the rest of them, and I'm not taking any chances. As I'm based in the UK, I personally picked up the pink, blue and purple splatter version for £39.99 at Blood Records, but that's because I prefer buying from music specialists. Whenever I've ordered from generalist storefronts, my records have arrived with damage to their sleeves, but online record shops are typically better equipped to ensure that doesn't happen.

If you don't have a turntable or record player but love physical media, you can also pre-order GTA 6 The Album for $17.98 at Best Buy on CD. You'll be missing out on the exclusive poster, but you'll get the same 34-tracks as vinyl fans.

• View all video game vinyl at Best Buy

Check out our GTA 6 pre-orders page to find the best places to shop for console bundles and the game so you can be prepared for November 19.

GTA 6 is back in the limelight following yet another supposed Rockstar Games leak – but this time, the leak includes its predecessor: GTA 5.

In case you're out of the loop, a huge GTA 6 leak made rounds last month, showing a good bit of what we ended up seeing in the official extended look on Netflix later on.

And, what's more, the leak kept on givin' as the anonymous poster behind it stated they'd not stop in a demand for digital rights, physical copies, and more, with claims to be "raising funds for a secret project" of sorts (although this was all admittedly muddled by cryptocurrency links).

Well, Rockstar can't seem to catch a break, as a new leak is allegedly surfacing with a whopping 200 GB of unseen data – data that apparently includes everything from early GTA 6 assets to cut GTA 5 content.

Posts on the likes of Twitter describe some of the details, outlining how the leak supposedly includes a look at an expanded Liberty City setting that fans suspect was planned to appear in GTA 5 before being scrapped.

The leak reportedly includes source code, as well as Rockstar tools and even early GTA 5 dialogue.

There are various other discussions on the leak – which is precisely 192 GB according to its sources – online, as well.

There's one that highlights the cut Agent Trevor DLC for GTA 5 – a James Bond-esque style expansion that former developers previously reported was canceled because it couldn't "out-compete" the "cash cow" that GTA Online had become – for instance. It shows the apparent order of the missions (and their names) that might've been part of the DLC.

Others showcase GTA 6 map assets and more early data from the upcoming Rockstar game.

All in all, it seems to be a pretty hefty leak. I'm curious to see whether or not GTA 6 will truly feature a Liberty City expansion later down the line… but who knows?

With GTA 6 about to launch, Take-Two boss unloads on investor criticizing "years of delays, missed expectations, and continued dependence on a small number of major franchises."

Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick had a quibble to pick during the company's annual virtual shareholder meeting GamesRadar+ attended on September 17. Sounding like bajillions of GTA 6 fans around the globe, an investor expressed frustration with Take-Two’s growing history of delays – but Zelnick squashes the suggestions that Take-Two is incompetent.

Zelnick reads the following offending question out loud during the shareholder meeting: "Many shareholders have tolerated years of delays, missed expectations, and continued dependence on a small number of major franchises. If these issues persist, does the board believe that the current management team remains the right group to lead the company, or is prepared to replace senior executives if operational performance and shareholder value creation do not improve?" The CEO agrees that if Take-Two's management team were found lacking by its board, then yes, that team would be replaced.

"I would, however, quibble with your characterization in the question," Zelnick continues. It's true that GTA 5 released in September of 2013, exactly 13 long years ago. And sure, GTA 6 has been delayed twice since it was officially confirmed in 2023, but its latest release date, November 19, is now looming. Zelnick doesn't think investors quite understand what Take-Two management had to do to get to this point.

"When this management team took over the company in March of '07," Zelnick says, "the revenue of the company was under a billion dollars. The company was under investigation by at least four government entities, had not filed annual reports in 13 months, and had not scheduled an annual meeting, despite obligations to do so. They had one major franchise in GTA. The rest of the business was losing money, and the company was very nearly bankrupt."

Take-Two's current managers pulled the company back from the edge, Zelnick argues, leading us to our current reality where "the company's revenue is guided to be between 8 and 8.2 billion dollars this year." Later, the CEO makes a point to mention "that GTA 5 launched in 2013, and unlike most titles, remained a top five selling title for 13 years. So GTA is a different kind of experience." Get with it, or get over it.

GTA 6 on PC sounds even more inevitable in Take-Two CEO's latest comments.

Rockstar has finally announced discs for GTA 6 – just not the kind you were probably hoping for. A soundtrack release called Grand Theft Auto 6: The Album will drop on November 20, just after the game itself, on CD and vinyl. The album features "34 original tracks" from a wide array of artists, including everyone from Travis Scott and Rauw Alejandro to Keith Richards and Morgan Wallen.

Grand Theft Auto 6: The Album is currently available to pre-order straight from the official site in an array of formats. You can get a two-disc CD for $20, or a vinyl collection on two transparent discs for $50. It seems Best Buy and Blood Records will each have a unique color pattern for the $50 vinyl collection, and an additional colorway will be sold through independent record shops.

There's also a $125 limited-edition vinyl collection that includes "two transparent magenta discs filled with blue liquid" and "exclusive new artwork and packaging designs that echo the iconic style" of GTA 6.

The soundtrack will, of course, also be available on streaming services, and you can already listen to six of the tracks across platforms including YouTube. I've gotta say, hearing Morgan Wallen's modern country ballad sharing space with Keith Richards' old-school blues riff and an array of hip-hop and R&B tracks is absolutely bizarre, but hey, I guess that means there's something for everyone here.

Unfortunately, while physical music sales are soaring, game publishers are backing away from physical media, and Rockstar is giving GTA 6 a deluxe physical soundtrack release while refusing to give game collectors the same sort of treatment. I guess it's nice, at least, that we'll have some portion of GTA 6's content archived on disc for posterity.

The death of physical media is having the opposite effect on me – I've fallen back in love with my disc drive in 2026.

A GTA 6 PC port is all but a matter of time, new comments from Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Rockstar owner Take-Two, suggest.

At a short investors' meeting convened earlier today, September 17, Zelnick fielded a question about Take-Two's release strategy for GTA 6. Seemingly in reference to price and production issues, one stockholder asked: "Is the shortage of PS5 Pros causing changes in delivery of PC gaming?" (As it happens, PS5 Pros all but vanished after the GTA 6 Extended Look reveal, seeming as a result of anticipation pushing many players to splurge on a beefier console.)

"I assume this is a question regarding the cadence of PC launches," Zelnick responds. "The strategy of the company is, over time, generally speaking, to launch for any platforms for which there's a meaningful audience. But that isn't always the case, and certainly, if platforms were no longer viable, we could change that strategy."

Here's the key line: "And I would note that the PC platform is becoming more and more important to our company over time."

GTA 5 certainly had a meaningful presence on PC. On Steam, GTA 5 Enhanced has over 210,000 user reviews (83% positive) and, to this day, regularly ranks in the top 20 for the store's daily active users.

This enhanced release replaced GTA 5 Legacy, which has been delisted from Steam but can still be viewed online. It has nearly 1.9 million user reviews (88% positive) and peaked at over 1.1 million concurrent players years ago, which would put it in Steam's top 10 for all-time peaks.

Between the two editions, SteamDB trackers estimate GTA 5 has sold 50 to 90 million copies on PC – a very meaningful slice of the 230 million copies sold to date, even with conservative assumptions.

GTA 5 Legacy was released on Steam in April 2015, a few years after the game's September 2013 console launch. Speculatively, GTA 6 may see a similar gap, upwards of 12 to 18 months, before a presumed PC port – long enough for console players to be happy to buy it again, you might argue. Not me, though. I'd never argue that.

Previously, Zelnick stressed that GTA 6 is skipping PC at launch to focus on the "core consumer" on consoles, not because of a rumored PlayStation exclusivity deal. "Historically, Rockstar's gone to console first," he said.

Zelnick's stopped just short of confirming a PC release for GTA 6, but a man leading a company that loves money surely isn't going to leave that much of it on the table, especially at a time when PC gaming is showing more growth than other core platforms.

GTA 6 isn't coming to PC at launch, but not because Rockstar doesn't "care about PC," says GTA 5 producer: "If you're working on that, you're not working on something else."

The first decade of Grand Theft Auto's 3D reinvention, from 2001 to 2011, brought four full-length releases (not counting handheld instalments or DLC expansions) across two console generations: games that reshaped the videogame landscape in their open-world image. In 2023, as GTA 5 enters its tenth year, it remains the series' only release of the period. A single game following in those footsteps couldn't, surely, hope to have the same seismic effect. And yet.

When Sony revealed the PS5 lineup in a 2020 event promising the 'Future Of Gaming', the very first title it showed was GTA 5 – a game that had first released on PS3. This enhanced edition would bring the game to its third generation of consoles, across the span of which it has sold over 170 million copies. Few games have ever remained in the conversation for so long. But for those who haven't held onto their citizenship over that time, what's it like to revisit Los Santos after a few years away?

Old stomping ground

Visually, GTA 5 has grown old with remarkable grace. In close-ups the game occasionally shows its age, but in the sweep of transit, it still convinces. Of course, it's had rather a lot of work done over the years – what else would you expect from a game set, more or less, in LA? The cosmetic enhancements include cleaner textures and sharper resolutions, naturally, while on PS5 these changes also extend to the hands, the DualSense haptics improving the sense of the city beneath our tyres and pulsing in time with the thick bass of a nightclub.

Most startling, though, are the changes to the quality of light itself. From the searing neons of Vice City to the haze of San Andreas, light has always been a tool Rockstar leverages to establish a sense of place, but here the combination of HDR and ray tracing pushes it further than ever before. Brittle morning sunshine at one end of the day; at the other, Pacific sunsets that bleed out into pink; after darkness falls, the twinkle of lights catching in newly reflective skyscrapers and chrome paint jobs. On a gloomy British day, it's truly transportive.

Along with the odd newly introduced detail – including stray cats that scurry into alleyways as you drive past – and a first-person mode to appreciate them better, everything works together to evoke the feel of a real city, in a way that's still unmatched after all these years. Spider-Man's New York may have the edge in fidelity, but it never feels alive in quite the same way Los Santos does. In part, perhaps, because where the former game posits a city that (for all its supervillain inhabitants) fundamentally works, Rockstar's game is more honest.

The enormous wealth disparity of the region makes for a virtual world that can be navigated by a sense of altitude and affluence alone. For all that cutscenes might try to sell the cultural chasm between protagonists Franklin and Michael, it's never realised better than in the climb required to pick up quests from your new mentor, up from South Central's tightly bunched bungalows and scruffy unused lots into the rarefied air of Rockford Hills, with its playgrounds of the rich and famous. And then, eventually, over the spine of the mountains, the sparsely populated back-country that Trevor calls home, every bit as wild as its inhabitant.

The result is a place as beautiful as it is ugly, where rolling vistas are pocked with billboards crude in graphic design and innuendo, where as much effort has been put into rendering the litter as the architecture. This, at least, helps to explain why – for a world that remains so brilliantly inviting to the player – every character you meet seems to hate living in it so much. This aspect of GTA 5 has aged significantly less well: if its caustic nihilism could be a little wearing at the time, it can feel exhausting now, a relic of '00s attitudes that prized saying the unsayable and disdained anyone stupid enough to care about anything.

This seems in part to have been a reaction to the reaction to GTA 4, a game that was stupid enough to care about things. The tale of Niko Bellic, with his regrets and tragic backstory, was an early step towards the kind of more mature, prestige storytelling that characterised The Last Of Us, GTA 5's 2013 contemporary, and then the Red Dead Redemption series.

The early movements of the plot here are roughly in line with those examples. Michael is established as a man out of time, plagued by a kind of American Beauty suburban ennui and a nostalgia for his younger criminal days, while Franklin steps into the classic GTA role of felonious up-and-comer with just a hint of reluctance about that life. Most venom is reserved for what Michael sees as the soft indulgence of modern west-coast American life, and for the supporting cast. Franklin's cohabiting aunt is faddy and promiscuous. Michael's daughter is starry-eyed and promiscuous. His wife is ungrateful, unfaithful and, yes, promiscuous. The limited roles available to women were among the few sour notes raised in our review at the time, and it's only curdled with time. It's no surprise that Rockstar seems set to address this with GTA 6.

But there might be no character for whom the plot has less respect than Jimmy, Michael's son, who is introduced screaming slurs into his headset while playing a Call Of Duty-like shooter. To his father, Jimmy represents the ills of the next generation. To Rockstar, he seems to represent the gamer, the worst caricature of its own audience – the same ones, perhaps, who rejected the more sombre storytelling of GTA 4.

Talking Trevor

The introduction of third protagonist Trevor is held back. When he arrives, though, he's immediately established as an avatar for the player's ugliest desires, and an embodiment of that rejection – something enacted, in his very first mission, through the application of his boot to the skull of Johnny Klebitz, star of GTA 4's The Lost And Damned. Development of the 2009 add-on coincided with the height of media discussions about ludonarrative dissonance, and Trevor comes off as the response: a raised middle finger, sticky with blood.

Which brings us, inevitably, to the notorious torture sequence, in which Trevor aids federal agents in the 'interrogation' of a seemingly innocent man. It's as uncomfortable to participate in now as it was then, choosing between electrocution and waterboarding, then tugging on a thumbstick to enact the torment. This discomfort seems to be the intent, something underlined by the speech given by Trevor – rarely the voice of reason or conscience – which concludes that torture is "useless as a means of getting information". But he also admits to relishing the violence for its own sake. Sometimes it's hard not to suspect the game does, too.

The moment is indicative of GTA 5's approach to satire in general, which is often to take real-world topics and give them the Nelson Muntz treatment: point, laugh dismissively, move on. The advantage of this broad-brush approach, though, is that when it picks a target that resonates, it's easy to give it the benefit of the doubt.

Grand Theft Auto has always been built on a fundamental distrust and distaste for the authorities and the wealthy – timeless themes that have only gathered a wider audience in recent years. We'll confess, too, to finding a little catharsis in the blowing-up of Jay Norris, CEO of Facebook stand-in Life Invader, much as we did in the downfall of Glass Onion's own tech-billionaire analogue. It could be called prescient – remember that this was years before the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and Zuckerberg wasn't quite the public enemy he has become – but for the game mainly being interested in making jokes about hipster workers and offices that look like creches.

Still, it's a little terrifying how relevant its concerns – which stem, primarily, from the ugliest excesses of American capitalism – remain today. Once again, this has only gained from the nips and tucks that GTA 5 has received since launch. In 2022, players noticed that some of the game's transphobic content had been removed, while new radio stations have been accompanied with adverts and talk-radio segments that skewer more recent topics. The biggest additions, though, have come through GTA Online's new story missions. 2017's Doomsday Heist update found a fine successor to Jay Norris in the form of Avon Hertz (an obvious play on Elon Musk, another example of Rockstar being a little ahead of the curve of public sentiment), while in July last year Operation Paper Trail introduced a lethal heatwave and an energy crisis to GTA's world just as real life faced its own equivalents.

Ultimately, most of these are topical reskins stretched across existing mission structures – aspects of the game that have started to creak, as you shuttle between checkpoints and engage in wave after wave of shootouts – but they're indicative of the kind of fuzzy eternal present in which Online allows Los Santos to exist. New music, coming out of the car radio, in nightclub sets from real DJs, and in the form of an entire new Dr Dre EP. Stories of supporting characters from the singleplayer campaign, picked up years along the line.

Nowadays, Grand Theft Auto 5 essentially means GTA Online. It's what greets you on the starting menu, the singleplayer campaign tucked away in a tab. It's what has driven all those sales, and the game's longevity – a second world built atop and now considerably bigger than the one that launched ten years ago. GTA 5 didn't invent the concept of a live-service game or multiplayer concerts or virtual hangout spots, and it might not have remoulded the shape of action videogames in the same identifiable way as GTA 3, but it's hard to deny that it fits perfectly into the modern landscape, even after all this time.

Check out our best GTA games ranking for which to play next!

GTA 6 marketing is now rolling out in full force ahead of the game's November launch, which some might question the necessity of for what's easily one of the most highly anticipated games of all time. But Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick says it's not just about building awareness – it's about building hype.

When GTA 6: An Extended Look arrived on Netflix last month, it racked up a whopping 31.1 million views on that platform alone in its first four days. At the time of writing, it has also accumulated 27 million views on YouTube since its publication. I'm sure I don't need to tell you that that's a lot of views, but how many of those do you think were from people who were newly introduced to the concept of GTA 6 with that showcase? We can safely assume that a massive amount were already well aware of the game when they watched it, but that doesn't make the marketing a waste of time.

As Zelnick says in a chat at GameBeat's Insider event, this is a concern that investors have raised before, too. "Well, obviously everyone's heard of Grand Theft Auto 6. So why are you wasting money on marketing? Shouldn't you just put it out there? That is the question," he recalls being asked. However, he explains: "I think in launching broad-based entertainment properties, you don't have a choice. You always have to go out and create enthusiasm. So, awareness is one thing; enthusiasm is another thing."

Zelnick looks back on his time working in the movie business, during which time he found that "if the thing is no good, you can market the living shit out of it, and people will still not notice the marketing." Beyond that, "If the marketing's terrible, you can turn people off, and if the marketing's great, you can create more excitement."

He reiterates: "The whole goal that we always have, whether it's this upcoming launch or any other title, is to take awareness and turn it into excitement, and take the lack of awareness and turn it into awareness."

Would GTA 6 have done well if Rockstar had gone completely silent after its first trailer and then randomly shadowdropped the full game at some point? Of course – it'd also set the internet on fire in the process. But working on fans over time, rolling out new screenshots, footage, and information via interviews – it's like shaking a cola bottle vigorously before finally taking the cap off. Even for fans who've been planning to buy the game from the start, the marketing spurs conversation online, potentially helping convince those who weren't already sold, too.

It's safe to say that Rockstar and Take-Two know what they're doing, anyway – it'll be interesting to see just how many copies of GTA 6 are sold at launch after all this.

Parts of GTA 6 are "a bit outdated and weird," says former Rockstar dev, but "like GTA 5" it will "perform really well" and keep fans busy for a decade.

It's only just settling in that GTA 6 is actually coming out this November. After 13 years, the sequel will actually be here, and we have the extended look on Netflix to prove it. In light of this preview, a former Rockstar animator has shared his perspective on what we've seen and what it could lead to.

Mike York worked at the studio for a number of years, contributing to GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2, and his first impression is the duality of the two leads, Jason and Lucia. "Rockstar usually gives us a bunch of neat characters who are funny and have their own flair," he tells TechRadar.

"I don't know if we're going to see that with Jason, but I hope we do," he says, before adding Lucia is a contrast to Jason's stoicism. "There's that moment in the trailer where they get in an elevator, and he says, 'Sometimes I'm just more comfortable when I have to use a gun.' She replies: 'Just be charming!' Lucia's got this attitude where you can tell she's trying to break him out of his shell. She's the one that probably goes into missions gung-ho, all guns blazing."

That seems like what Rockstar wants us to believe. He's more of a strategist; she wants to go for it and figure it out as they do. Missions might involve both skill sets in different ways. In discussing the level of secrecy, York mentions that Rockstar operates under a complete information lockdown, to the point that having social media can feel like stepping out.

"They try to instill in all their employees that you don't say anything anywhere," he explains. "If you look up most of the people at Rockstar, they don't have any social media presence because they're scared to. I was. When I worked there, I didn't say anything ever."

As impressive as the showcase was, some parts didn't land especially well for him. Certain aspects are "a bit outdated and weird" and demonstrate shifting internal priorities. "The whole UI doesn't really match the style of game and what we're used to. Rockstar has a big and very talented team. If they wanted, they could go in and change those elements before a final release," he comments. "Will they do that? That's another question because there’s probably a lot of other stuff they're sweating about."

Ultimately, what comes out will be updated and patched for years afterward, and any niggling problems will likely be ironed out. "It will perform really well and become something we'll be able to play for a decade later like GTA 5," York adds. "Online will come out and probably be an ever-evolving metaverse which will carry the franchise forever."

Rockstar boss says GTA 6's police "can be harder" to shake off than before, "but it's fun" because it forces you "to think more"

Bad news if you live in Europe and you're still without a PS5 Pro ahead of the release of GTA 6 – stock issues have sent prices skyrocketing, as it appears everyone has had the same idea of grabbing the console before the launch of Rockstar's blockbuster this November.

As reported by Heise Online, asking prices for the PS5 Pro have increased significantly over the last few weeks, coinciding with the GTA 6 Extended Look. A price tracking chart on the site shows a major upward trend in prices in Germany, with things remaining steady at the €899.99 recommended retail price in early August before jumping up at the end of the month into the thousands around and beyond the big GTA 6 showcase.

The site currently lists asking prices for the console from sites like Notebooksbilliger going as high as €1,399.99. Many of the inflated listings come from third-party sellers on eBay, and there's a seemingly good reason for that – a lack of stock elsewhere. The PS5 Pro is listed as unavailable on PlayStation Direct in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and the UK. In Germany specifically, reports from late last month show this has been the case for weeks.

Is this really GTA 6's fault? Well, we can't prove it for sure, but there's certainly a correlation if nothing else. And it makes sense – Sony and Rockstar previously proclaimed that GTA 6 "plays best on PS5," and, well, the PS5 Pro is the better PS5. It'd make sense that GTA fans would want to prepare for launch by buying the strongest available platform.

This demand-driven price surge is even more unfortunate than it could have been as it also comes after an official price hike from Sony earlier in the year. In Europe, the PS5 Pro jumped to €899.99 this April – a €100 increase from its €799.99 launch price. That'd be a significant enough surge as it is, but to see the consoles now go for hundreds more than that as folks become desperate to get their hands on one? It's rough out here.

GTA 6 teasers keep popping up on celebrity social media as Travis Scott, Morgan Wallen, and more hint at Rockstar collaboration.

Rockstar seems to be doing something with celebrities like Travis Scott, since they keep releasing cryptic GTA 6 teasers.

The somewhat notorious Travis Scott posted art of two glittering pleaser heels leaning against a stripper pole on his Instagram, where he writes, "Phase 1. NOW ITS TIME. MY RETURN TO GAME GOTTA COME WITH RAGE AND ALOT OF DANCING LETS RIDE

"J… O. H….. to be continued. See yall soon." Travis Scott already suggested he would be involved in GTA 6 in his 2025 music video for the song "2000 Excursion" with Don Toliver and Sheck Wes, as a GTA 6 fan on Reddit noticed.

So far, joining Travis Scott in ruining GTA 6 fans' days with speculation is Morgan Wallen – the seriously controversial country star – who suggested on Twitter he was a part of GTA 6 with an image of a crumbling poolside in GTA 6's typical pink and pulp-y art style. Then, the rapper Future, producer Metro Boomin, Yung Lean, who is one of the great loves of my life because I was weird in high school, as well as Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, Latin music star Raúl Alejandro, and Argentinian trap group CAR7IEL & Paco Amoroso also have all hinted at a GTA 6 collab.

"Wtf is going on lol," frets a popular Reddit comment in a thread about Future's teaser.

My personal conspiracy is that there's a difference between the musicians who have posted the same picture of a shiny, sunset-colored Corvette (Future, Metro Boomin, and Yung Lean) and those with unique images.

Keith Richards, for example, got to release a GTA 6 teaser of an iguana looking pensive in yellowish light. I'm inclined to think that this means that he, and the others with special images, like Travis Scott, will have character roles, while those who are posting that Corvette will be featured on GTA 6's radio. The GTA games have never been too modest for a celebrity cameo, after all, and they've hosted a huge variety of artists – like Twin Peaks actor Kyle MacLachlan in GTA 3, model Cara Delevingne in GTA 5, and late Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld, who played himself in GTA 4.

But the real point of GTA 6 marketing is to push fans to the fine edge of the cliff leading to a mental breakdown, so Rockstar hasn't yet offered any peace with an official explanation for the open-world game's latest blast of teasers.

King of '00s nightclub music T-Pain previously revealed his involvement with GTA 6 in 2024, and Widow's Bay actor Stephen Root just confirmed he'll appear in the game. So Rockstar is definitely unrolling a 1,000-foot red carpet for GTA 6, but we don't know why yet.

Rockstar boss says GTA 6's police "can be harder" to shake off than before, "but it's fun" because it forces you "to think more."