Dread it, run from it, but GTA 6 arrives all the same. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say GTA 6 is shaping up to be the biggest game launch of all time, and naturally, other developers want to avoid it like the plague. We've seen a smaller-scale version of this thanks to Hollow Knight: Silksong, of which the release date reveal saw several indie games delay their release to get out of the way.
Speaking to IGN, the CEO of the marketing platform Gamesight, Adam Lieb, explained, "GTA has been this little bit of a black cloud that looms kind of over everything. So, that, I think, has caused people to be more hesitant with dates." And while you would imagine the spectre of GTA 6 only affects some specific types of game, it goes a lot deeper than you would think.
Lieb added, "What's funny with GTA is, because we do a lot of genre analysis comparisons because of the RP servers," saying that almost every single genre you could imagine has been recreated by players in GTA roleplay.
"Someone’s built a horror GTA RP server or whatever, so that competes with Silent Hill somehow. And you obviously take that with a little bit of grain of salt, but the scope of that game is so large that it ends up competing with stuff that it otherwise wouldn't."
I wouldn't be shocked if we only see a handful of games actually released in mid-to-late May until after the first half of June, thanks to GTA's release date of May 26, with every major release confirmed for 2026 set to release before the end of March.
Of course, if it gets delayed again, we'll probably end up seeing other games move out of the way, too.
