If the game you want to play is taking years to come out, why not make your own version? An entrepreneurial developer is doing just that for GTA 6, and if that doesn't sound wild enough, he's hoping to outdo Rockstar to market as well. May we all have such confidence.
The creative spirit in question is known as Ziwen, and he's started posting about the progress on his Grand Theft Auto 6-like on Twitter. "Day one of building GTA 6. Still feels fake typing that out," he writes in a post, with some extremely early footage of the project.
"Spent a couple hours getting the whole project structured and pushed to the repo," he says. "Sandbox is up and running."
I spent a week ignoring everyone who said to switch engines. Day 7, I pivot. You were right.Building GTA 6 with a loop of AI agents. I spent the entire day on one thing: Swapping the project out of Godot and onto Unreal.Yesterday I said I'd test Unity and probably skip… https://t.co/abvL6jJMhY pic.twitter.com/wjpPgUK6TwJune 16, 2026
True enough, the video contains a large blue object wandering around a 3D plain, with a couple of platforms to jump at. It's basic, but functional, and at one point or another Rockstar's newest urban playground would've looked something like this.
Ziwen's game is being built using Godot, because "it's community-owned, so nobody can pull an EPIC on us later and rewrite the deal once we're invested." There won't be a studio or publisher, according to him, "just whoever shows up," with a request for volunteers
He then makes his lofty ambitions public: "Beat the real GTA 6 to launch. Ambitious, probably stupid, doing it anyway."
Later updates include a large amount of generative AI assets for Rockstar-esque news clips and the like. The latest, from day seven, mentions a move to Unity, because "if you're serious about triple-A, get on a real engine. so here we are."
The gameplay sections involve running around an actual neighborhood, quite a ways removed from this thing's origins. "First time this actually looks like GTA instead of a prototype of it," Ziwen proclaims.
I wouldn't go that far, but racing what may very well be the biggest video game launch ever through gen-AI and vibe coding is an audacious move I kind of enjoy. Something to keep an eye on, just to see what eventually emerges.
