Grand Theft Auto 6 could still be 4 years away, it’s claimed

Grand Theft Auto 6 could still be four years away from release and feature an expanding map set in Vice City, it’s been claimed.

That’s according to noted insider Tom Henderson – who has previously leaked accurate details about the next Battlefield game – and corroborated by respected Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier, as well as VGC’s own sources.

Henderson posted a video last week claiming that the new Grand Theft Auto instalment would release in either 2024 or 2025, partly due to Rockstar’s new focus on employee wellbeing, which comes following criticism of its alleged crunch culture.

Journalist Schreier had reported for Kotaku last year that GTA 6 was Rockstar’s next game, but claimed that it was “still a ways away”.

On Sunday, he replied to Henderson’s suggestion that the game would now release in 2024 or 2025, stating that: “everything Tom Henderson has said about the game matches up with what I’ve heard”.

Schreier added that previous comments he made suggesting that 2023 could be a realistic release for the sequel were made “before we entered a pandemic that still hasn’t stopped”.

In his April 2020 Kotaku report, Schreier claimed that management’s efforts to reduce employee stress and crunch could see Rockstar release a “moderately sized” GTA 6 at launch and then regularly expand the game over time.

This is something that is also claimed in Henderson’s new report, in which he suggests that the game will take place in a modern day Vice City – which is based on Miami – and that the location will change and expand with new areas after release, similar to Fortnite’s game map.

This also matches what VGC has heard about the next GTA game from its own sources.

Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser left the company in March last year, while GTA studio Rockstar North has been ramping up to fill multiple positions for work on next-gen projects.

This month Companies House listings indicated that Houser has established a new game studio, called Absurd Ventures.

Another influential figure behind the GTA series, former Rockstar North president Leslie Benzies, founded his own studio, Build a Rocket Boy, in 2017. The Scottish studio is working on a new open-world game called Everywhere.

Earlier this year, a patent by Rockstar Games programmers pointed towards potential significant improvements to how NPCs navigate open-world games such as Grand Theft Auto 6.

The patent’s documents describe a system that deals with non-player navigation around a virtual environment, including making the navigation and behaviours of computer characters more realistic.