It feels like the whole world is on tenterhooks for the release of Grand Theft Auto 6, if not because they are excited for a videogame then because it feels like Rockstar is propping up that part of the global economy not propped up by AI. But I'll tell you one guy who isn't going to play: Vitaly Milonov, a deputy of Russia's Duma from the United Russia party, who recently lambasted the game for carrying "the stench of Americanism."

In a recent chat with Russian radio station Govorit Moskva, Milonov gave Rockstar a piece of his mind: "GTA, from its very first version, has been about violence and hooliganism," Milonov told the station. "The last version doesn't differ at all from those before it, in terms of deviance."

What does he mean by "deviance"? Well, a little about Milonov: a member of Russia's ruling party, Milonov has long made a name for himself as a blowhard campaigner against gay rights and 'non-traditional values' in Russian society. He has, in the course of his career, spearheaded laws banning "gay propaganda," lost the plot over gay Finnish stamps, slung anti-semitic insults at Jewish political opponents, and called LGBT rights activists "non-human". He is deputy chairman for the State Duma Committee on Family, Women and Children.

But despite his lifelong commitment to persecuting innocent people, Milonov actually doesn't seem worried that the GTA 6 hype will end up converting innocent Russians to lifestyles he disapproves of.

"I do not think that the game can strongly persuade anyone to adopt such a lifestyle," he continued, "if only because a normal person understands that it's about the world of the USA. There—violence, sex and drugs really reign. You immerse yourself in the stench of Americanism when you play GTA."

Milonov actually seems to welcome the regular ultraviolence of GTA's world, given that it only impacts Americans. "Any violence in GTA is violence against a potential enemy, so if they all tear each other apart—even just in GTA—it will only be for the better."

Rockstar's probably not going to put that on the back of the box.

We're yet to see a single drop of gameplay footage, but I can promise you Grand Theft Auto 6 is very real and definitely happening. At least, I certainly hope it is. Rockstar opened the door for pre-orders last week with its $80 and $100 versions, the latter of which I'm not overly jazzed about.

But we're a mere five months out from exploring a modern-day Vice City and everything Leonida has to offer. Well… I say we. As far as PC goes, Rockstar has decided to not include us in what might be one of the most fervorous videogame events of the decade. Worse still, we have no idea when a PC version of GTA 6 is actually going to happen.

The sad fact is that Rockstar simply doesn't deem us a core audience. I could sit here and rant and rave about how archaic that feels in the big 2026, but our own Harvey Randall has already gone ahead and done that for me.

So instead, let me go ahead and take a peek at the results of the poll I put out to you all last week: Are you going to buy GTA 6 on console, or wait for a PC version? And I say this in the least clickbait-y way possible, but the results did genuinely surprise me.

39% of you said you're simply going to bunker down and wait for the game to come to PC. And you know what, I get it, Double-dipping on a game that expensive feels ridiculous, especially when we can wait a little longer and then (hopefully) get a superior experience—from both our hardware and also months of patches Rockstar will inevitably be pumping into the game.

I do have to admire your patience though, especially as someone who suffers from a bad case of FOMO. I'd like to get up on my high horse and declare myself perfectly capable of waiting. But, erm, I won't. Because I definitely cannot wait.

That wasn't the result that was entirely surprising to me, though. It is, in fact, the second most-voted option that really caught my attention: 28% of you said you have no interest in GTA 6 whatsoever, and so won't be buying it.

Perhaps I've simply been spending too long in the eye of the Rockstar storm, but I had expected a good deal more of you to be in the FOMO camp alongside me. Or at least, to have some modicum of interest that had you side-eyeing a lack of PC release. Has the hype grown so feral that it's turned you off entirely, or have you never been much of a Grand Theft Auto gamer to begin with? I'd love to know why you aren't interested in the game down in the comments.

As for those of you who are interested, 16% of you said you'll be picking up a copy on console. Whether that means you've already preordered or plan to scoop up the game closer to launch, at least a few of you will be diving into the action alongside our console pals. And a further 8% of you would buy GTA 6 on console… if you had one, that is. I'll be manifesting a swift PC release for you.

A few of you are on the fence too, though—8% of you have said that you're going to wait until the game is out and then make a decision. Pretty reasonable if you ask me! A game this big certainly runs the risk of being a veritable hotbed of bugs, glitches, or external discourse, so holding out to gauge initial reaction is probably the smart thing to do. Or, y'know, you'll last a few hours before the hype train's power becomes too much and you cave on the first day anyway.

Whatever you're planning to do, let me know your reasons. Or lambast me for my terrible lack of self control and very real fear of missing out. Either one'll do.

Grand Theft Auto 6 pre-orders went live last week. To some it was a moment of joy, finally after all these years we find ourselves a step closer to the videogame that has been promised to end all other videogames. But for others the one look at the price tag was enough to reality check all previous hype.

And then there was another, smaller camp of players, who were able to have their cake and eat it too, as they pre-ordered GTA 6 and essentially paid nothing for it. Some clever folks had been planning for this day months, even years in advance, and had spent their time searching on Bing (stay with me) to rack up Microsoft points.

Thanks to Bing's reward scheme a few players managed to save up enough points to pre-order GTA 6 at no extra cost; other than the mental and emotional cost of using Bing, which in hindsight may be greater than $100.

"I pre-ordered [GTA 6] using 98,000 Microsoft points," player HugoWheynow explained. "Thank you Rockstar for all the delays, which allowed me to have all these extra months to save my Microsoft points." While another Bing user posted their Microsoft points-paid pre-order depicting the full amount being deducted from their Microsoft account balance.

Thank you, Microsoft Rewards. 😎 from r/MicrosoftRewards

Honestly, those players deserve a free copy of GTA 6, not just for braving Bing, but also for having the forethought to min-max it over the half a year or so. At a push you could earn up to 10,000 Microsoft points (roughly equates to $10) a month, which means if you start now you could at the very least shave some money off of GTA 6's price tag. Who knows, maybe you could even turn it into a reasonably priced game?

Searching on Bing alone can get you around 5,000 points every month. Combine that with opening the Bing app on your phone, playing any game on Xbox Game Pass, complete extra tasks under the 'More Activities' category, and even selling your friend's soul by referring them to Bing and you could be on your way to getting a decent chunk of money off on your GTA 6 pre-order or flat out purchase.

Once you have enough points, or are happy with what you've earned, you can head over to the Microsoft Rewards dashboard, select get my rewards and redeem your points into an Xbox Gift Card which you can then use to purchase GTA 6. All you have to do is weigh up whether using Bing is worth it or not.

Grand Theft Auto 6 feels a little more real this week after Rockstar dropped over 60 new screenshots and opened the floodgates for pre-orders. My cynical feelings around its $100 Ultimate Edition aside, it's hard to not at least have one toe on the hype train—just about everyone's talking about it, both the good and the bad.

So it feels like a great time to revisit a question I asked you lovely folks a few weeks back around what you want to see out of Grand Theft Auto 6's radio stations. For me, music is such an integral part of the series—its radio stations are a hotbed of parody and their music serves as wonderful time capsules for the time period each game is set in.

That's why I'm so interested to see what these stations will bring in GTA 6. As for what you guys want, you had some very insightful responses.

AgentZee is absolutely on the same wavelength as me, saying they'd love to see Something Good by Alt-J make an appearance, commenting: "This is a great song to listen to while driving". I absolutely fell in love with this track when it made an appearance in 2015's Life is Strange—a game with a soundtrack I still adore over a decade later—and I'm already envisioning late-night drives around Leonida while this blasts in my ears.

And speaking of Leonida, some of you want to see its Florida influences shine in its musical choices. Neogunhero said "Real Florida Jit" music is a must, citing artists like Denzel Curry (who I'm a big fan of), Kodak Black, Smokerpurpp, Trick Daddy, and Ice Billion Berg. Viddy echoed that sentiment, saying it'd "be a real shame if they didn't" have some kind of Florida roots station, including "other FL natives who'd understand the realistic absurdity this game is surely going for."

Lucky said: "I want to be able to drive the stand-in for a convertible Ferrari at night while In The Air Tonight plays," which is an image I can totally picture. Wind blowing through Lucia and Jason's hair, those classic Collins drums kicking right in. Plus, the song was already in Vice City Stories, which makes GTA 6 the perfect game to bring it back, since we'll be revisiting the iconic area in all its modern-day glory.

Some of you focused more on the parody side of things, too. XoRn said they "could drive around for hours" listening to a parody news channel, while Jimfurbath said stand-up comedian "Tim Dillon hosting a conspiracy talk show radio is what GTA6 needs!"

My favourite of the whole bunch, though, has to be what Ianik has in mind for the game: "Only radio station with monks and Gregorians chorals. Without options to turn off". Incredible cursed energy, which somehow makes it the perfect choice for a game like Grand Theft Auto 6. Bring on the chants.

PC gaming entered the digital domain long before any other platform, but my heart has always lied firmly with physical media. Before I joined this team and became a full-fledged PC GamerTM, I was a console gamer—a label I have long blamed on being a child of divorce and finding it far easier to ferry an Xbox between two households than a desktop computer.

And for the most part, my console collection has always consisted of physical copies. Real, tangible discs you can pop in and hear that satisfying little whirr. And a lot of those copies I've procured secondhand. Hell, I spent nearly four years of my life working in a secondhand videogame store. The act of trading and repurposing someone's once-loved game, DVD, or CD is woven into the very fabric of my being.

For a long time, physical media was one of the most accessible, affordable ways to play videogames. Hell, there was literally a time where Sony created a 22-second marketing video mocking Xbox over its attempt to make game sharing more difficult.

I grew up doing swaps with my schoolmates. I have a distinct memory of being freshly 16 and desperately attempting to trade away a portion of my Xbox 360 collection to score a copy of Fable 3—turns out trying to sell something without ID when you're still in secondary school is an absolute ballache. I could walk into a store and come away with a pre-owned videogame that was half the price of buying it brand new.

But that's a problem, isn't it? At least, I reckon that's a problem as far as Rockstar's concerned. Its recent preorder announcement for Grand Theft Auto 6 came with a little tidbit that really bummed me out: its so-called physical editions are little more than a box containing a bit of paper with a code on it.

Is Rockstar the first developer to pull this? Of course not. Nintendo has long been using box-with-code as a way to get stuff on store shelves without needing a cartridge to do so. Alan Wake 2 received a fair bit of backlash for going digital-only, but that was in the name of keeping the game's overall price down to a respectable $60 on console and $50 on PC. And as I said at the start, PC has been almost exclusively digital for years: When was the last time you bought a used PC game at your local EB?

But consoles have remained firmly footed in the physical world, at least until now, and Rockstar has no explanation for the lack of a GTA 6 disc. There's no deep discount to excuse its decision. And I can't help but feel like it's all in the name of some bizarre form on control.

You could say it's concerned that discs will hit street sale early which could—gasp—leak information ahead of release. But Pearl Abyss literally got around this with Crimson Desert by ensuring disc copies couldn't unlock until launch day with a download. Is that the best solution? No—I don't love anything relating to physical media that requires some online component to get it up and running. But it was a workaround nevertheless.

So what is it, then? If I buy a physical copy of Grand Theft Auto 6, why can't I lend it to my mate, or sell it on for someone else to scoop up secondhand at a more affordable price? It is, quite frankly, a horrifically anti-consumer practice. Rockstar has made an abhorrent amount of money pumping microtransaction after microtransaction into GTA Online over the last 13 years. I'm sure it can afford to lose the odd copy to the secondhand market.

And if a future arises where Sony or Microsoft pack up their servers and jump off the videogame ship, what remains of GTA 6? Will it even be playable in a legitimate way? These kinds of practices aren't just harmful in the present, they have the very real potential to be harmful in the future, too. PC gamers have extensive experience in just how impermanent games can be when they're only available digitally.

Rumours have swirled around the possibility of an actual disc version of Grand Theft Auto 6 arriving after launch, though the only evidence to support that is a Reddit post displaying an incredibly vague and confusingly-worded response from a Rockstar customer support employee. I asked Rockstar whether it planned on releasing a disc copy in the future and was given no comment.

Our news writer Andy Chalk emailed Rockstar support himself and received a boilerplate response pointing him towards articles relating to the game's various editions, a support FAQ, and redeeming GTA+ membership.

Even if it does emerge with a disc-only version later down the line, that feels worse to me somehow. The earliest adopters get shafted by some weird Rockstar semantics. Or even worse, it encourages said early adopters to double-dip just to add a disc version to their collection. Either way, the only party coming out on top here is a multi-billion dollar corporation. And that sucks butt.

You won't get far in Vice City without weapons, and lots of 'em. Jason and Lucia are on a bit of a crime spree, you see. Just like we've done for the cars, map locations, and characters, I've trawled through everything Rockstar has released about GTA 6 so far to pick out what's available and how it might have changed from its predecessor.

Every GTA 6 weapon I've spotted so far

I've picked out 19 guns across both trailers and all the screenshots released so far. It's not clear how customisable some of these guns are, and whether similar-looking guns are actually two different ones. Likewise, I've not included melee weapons, since it's hard to judge which ones you'll be able to pick up. I'm sure there will be your usual knives, bats, and whatnot though.

One thing I've noticed is that there seem to be more named weapons. In GTA 5, most guns were just named after their generic class, such as 'pistol' and 'heavy pistol', or 'bullpup rifle' and 'carbine rifle'. A lot of the GTA 6 guns I've spotted have specific names, which I'd assume will also be used in-game. It's a nice touch that makes it easier to tell weapons apart.

When Rockstar announced that GTA 6 preorders would begin this week, everyone started speculating that a new trailer must finally be imminent. After years of leaks and delays, the developer must be planning to finally show at least a little actual Vice City gameplay. But preorders are live and there's no trailer in sight.

Nada. It's wild for Rockstar to be asking us for a minimum $80 to preorder a game it hasn't actually shown any gameplay for, right?

I know it's been over four years since the triple-A class of game started going for $70, and Nintendo's already been asking for $80, but it sure does chafe seeing GTA 6 preorders start at $80, and obnoxiously lock some gameplay behind a $100 "Ultimate Edition" right from the jump. The insult on top of injury is that Rockstar hasn't even shown us the game.

GTA 6 has had two trailers. The first was a 90 second reveal trailer and the second was a 3-ish minute spotlight on protagonists Jason and Lucia, both cinematic and story-focused. Even all those 63 new GTA 6 images were mostly Ultimate Edition ads, character artwork, and photo mode-style shots. We have not seen GTA 6 being played. Not at all!

Yes, we've seen some years-old leaked gameplay. Yes, it's a GTA game so we can probably pretty well guess what it plays like (a long conversation while driving then some snap-to-head gunplay). Dammit it's the principle of the thing though. I feel like I'm getting mugged, and not in a fun GTARP kind of way.

The elephant in the room, of course, is that aside from educated speculation we don't actually know when GTA 6 might launch on PC. So I'm not preordering nuthin' because I don't own a current generation console. It will come to PC eventually, though, and this doesn't bode well for how Rockstar will treat us when it does.

This can't be the first time a publisher has ever had the hubris to sell a game without a gameplay trailer, but it sure looks like the height of arrogance from Rockstar. I suppose it thinks GTA 6 is too big to fail. It's probably right.

Grand Theft Auto 6 now feels quite a bit more tangible—preorders are live, and November is right around the corner. But amid this flurry of information and unrelenting hype came a bit of bad news for the GTA Online crowd: GTA 6 is being pushed as a "singleplayer experience".

Despite its impending launch, there's actually been precious little information about the next phase of the madcap online world. Granted, there's been precious little information about the game period. Rockstar knows it doesn't need to give anything away. It could ignore the pleas for a gameplay trailer right up until launch if it wanted to.

Regardless, we know some new version of the online mode must be coming. GTAO is why people are still playing this 13-year-old game, and while Red Dead Online never exploded in popularity like its predecessor, this doesn't feel like something Rockstar is going to give up on—certainly not after it acquired Cfx.re, the team behind FiveM.

So we can reasonably assume that GTAO 2 will launch later—perhaps to coincide with the arrival of GTA 6 on PC, which really is the home of GTA roleplaying. There's no indication when that might happen, though. This is classic Rockstar. It's a closed book, and it doesn't matter that PC is GTA's most popular individual platform, because the near-mythical reputation of this company means it doesn't need to use the conventional marketing playbook.

Let's face it, there's also probably a more insidious reason: If you own both a PC and a console and are eager for GTA, you'll almost certainly be double dipping. I know I will be. Despite Sony's claim that GTA 6 will be best on PlayStation 5, we know the PC version will be far superior. But the allure, the FOMO, they are too strong.

As a journalist and critic, I naturally wish Rockstar loosened its lips a little, and I have a real problem with it selling a $100 game without letting prospective players actually know what it will be like to play. I am, however, not remotely fazed by the initial lack of multiplayer; indeed, I think it's a good thing.

Live service games have utterly dominated this decade, and while I do have some favourites, I tend to crave games where I don't need to share the space with a bunch of randos. GTAO is impressive and I had a lot of fun with it, but GTA's overwhelming popularity, since 1997 and until GTA 5, has been down to its singleplayer capers. And that should be the priority, at least initially.

This doesn't just benefit me; it benefits the GTA Online fans as well. By creating space between the two projects, both of them will get the attention they deserve. Of course Rockstar has been working on the online component for years, but there's a vast gulf between working on multiple projects and releasing them at exactly the same time.

Basically: there needs to be a focus. Given the length of its development time and the vast amount of money that's presumably been put into this behemoth, we can realistically expect an incredibly ambitious and gargantuan game. There's also an expectation of polish, but there will doubtless be myriad bugs and issues at launch. If Rockstar was also launching a massive multiplayer platform at exactly the same time, well that way leads to disaster.

With just one new live game to worry about, Rockstar will be better able to ensure a smooth launch and shore up any gaps left by its final polish pass. We will get a superior version of GTA 6, and then, further down the road, the best possible version of GTA Online 2.

Rockstar will also presumably have a huge amount of data and feedback to sift through after the singleplayer launch, which will allow it to adapt GTA Online 2 to the needs of its players. Any new systems and mechanics introduced in GTA 6 can then be refined, or changed if they create unwelcome friction, which would only become worse in a neverending online experience.

I'm hopeful—perhaps foolishly so—that the gap will also allow Rockstar to build GTA Online 2 with its community. With GTA 6 out in the wild and likely making a disgusting amount of money, maybe Rockstar will feel like actually opening up a bit, using GTA 6's playerbase to help make GTA Online 2 something properly special.

Besides: how many people would really be diving into GTA Online 2 right away? In GTA 5, GTA Online was effectively a sequel. It's what you plunge into after you've spent 100 hours mucking around solo. Granted, there's now a massive online community, so I have no doubt that some people will be more excited to get stuck into the sequel to their favourite online hangout, but they also stand to benefit the most from Rockstar taking its time rather than releasing two complex games on the same day.

Honestly, it's also just nice to see a singleplayer game dominating the dreaded discourse. I've been working in this industry since 2011, and for too much of it we've been bouncing from one multiplayer game to the next. If I ever become a supervillain, my origin story will be that I had to edit one too many Arc Raiders stories.

So yeah, this is good for everyone, and while I like to pretend I am too cynical to get swept up in all the hype, I am genuinely thrilled at the prospect of playing a new singleplayer GTA. Even if I will have to play it on my puny PS5. grand the

GTA 6 has revealed its pre-order editions and, despite lots of fancy customisation options, and a relatively predictable price for the Standard Edition, people are understandably upset about how much content (which arguably comprises a portion of GTA 6's identity) is locked behind a paywall.

Obviously, us PC gamers with consoles will have to decide whether we're purchasing, but at least we might be able to grab it on sale on PC. It is worth noting, though, that since this game is purely digital, Rockstar can keep the price high for a long time (and they almost assuredly will). Below, I'll run through the exact difference between the Standard and Ultimate Edition so you can decide which one is worth your while.

What's in the GTA 6 Standard Edition?

• Price: $79.99/£69.99
• At a glance: One month of the GTA+ subscription and the Vintage Vice City pack (only if you pre-order the game), but far fewer customisation options overall.

The cheapest option for buying GTA 6 is still $10 more than every other big-budget game launch right now and it doesn't include a bunch of the cosmetic and customisation features that the Ultimate Edition has. It's a bit dire considering going rags to riches and spending your ill-gotten gains pimping out your house, clothes, and car is a key element of the GTA series.

Both editions include a month of GTA+. The future of GTA Online is currently unclear, but it's practically inevitable that Rockstar will create a GTA 6 Online variant, too.

You do also get the Vintage Vice City pack if you pre-order (that's us PC folks screwed I guess, unless we get it in some future 'complete edition'), which takes a little bit of the sting off. This cosmetic pack contains:

• Outfits and hairstyles: "Dress for excess with Jason’s effortlessly chic linen suit in vintage pastel, complemented by the cut and coif of the decade of decadence. Show everyone the world is yours in Lucia’s red sequin mini dress and curls."
• '55 Vapid Stanier: "Cruise Shore Drive in this classic sedan and store it just a stone's throw from the glistening sands of Ocean Beach in the Shore Court garage, complete with a weapon locker plus a secure place to deposit stolen goods to be fenced."
• Exclusive Weapon Pattern: "Adorn most guns with a tropical pattern inspired by Tommy Vercetti's iconic palm tree button-up."

It's a drop in the bucket in comparison to the cosmetic options you'll lose by not purchasing the Ultimate Edition, but I guess that's why they made it a pre-order bonus, so people would feel less crap about what is essentially locking cut-content behind an upgrade. Post-release, this pack will likely be available for purchase, too.

What's in the GTA 6 Ultimate Edition?

• Price: $99.99/£89.99
• At a glance: One month of the GTA+ subscription, the Vintage Vice City pack, and the Ultimate Edition upgrade (which you will almost definitely be able to purchase separately post-launch, so don't feel pressured to decide now)

The Ultimate Edition contains everything in GTA 6, unlocking all customization features throughout Vice City. The annoying part is that it includes what sound like job-style activities and vendors who will customize your cars and characters.

Take the "Classic Car Collection", for example, which sees you "track down a variety of abandoned classic and work-in-progress project cars and revitalize them". That sounds like a whole mini-questline you won't be able to access with standard. There's also vehicle customisation, a salon, a tattoo parlor, and clothing shops you can't use without ultimate, which, frankly, sucks. Here's everything included:

Vehicles and garages

• '95 Grotti Cheetah: "Grotti's signature mid '90s sports car and ode to Shore Drive, the ’95 Grotti Cheetah is complete with a minimalist, retro-futuristic livery and available to punctuate later-stage action."
• Ganado Retro Build: "Inject some muscle and classic stylings into Jason's well-worn Vapid Ganado low-riding pickup with exclusive mods."
• Shitzu Squalo: "Perfect for casting in Gambit Bay and reeling in catches of all sorts, this gradient pink and blue Squalo docked at Washington Beach is made open-ocean-ready with an explosives-laden weapons crate."
• '67 Vapid Dominator Buggy and Garage: "A Mud Club monster offering impressive off-road handling for the backwoods of Mount Kalaga and beyond. Conveniently store it at the Paradise Garage in Watson Bay, which features a weapon locker plus a secure place to deposit stolen goods to be fenced."
• Jason's Safehouse Vehicles: "Switch gears and soak up the sun in an Army fatigue-tinged Dinka Enduro motorcycle or Crest Kayak."

Weapons and cosmetics

• Hawk & Little Morgan Revolver: "His and hers versions of this powerful revolver with classic Vice City stylings sourced from the Vercetti Estate, including palm-tree-etched grips, engraved detailing, and high-performance scope."
• Personalized Weapon Variants: "Personalized sidearms with detailed engravings for Jason's Girardi ES9 pistol and Lucia's Klose K17 pistol."
• Vice City Style: "Whether poolside or side by side, Jason and Lucia can look the part with exclusive outfits, tattoos, and more."
• Goodtime Gear: "A capsule collection of apparel and accessories inspired by the Goodtime State’s hit TV show character, Macca the Alligator."

Unique activities and vendors

• Classic Car Collection: "Track down a variety of abandoned classic and work-in-progress project cars and revitalize them to their former glory in this special commission from eccentric collector and local fixer, Wyman."
• Ptt Youngin$ Compound: "Raid the compound of one of Southside Vice City’s loudest and most socially active gangs and escape safely to score some special items and distinct contraband."
• Rideout Customs: "Transform vanilla vehicles into magnificent works of art with detailed interiors, exquisite rims, and donk stylings."
• Sara's Unisex Salon: "Get signature salon styles for both Jason and Lucia, including facial hair for Jason and makeup and nails for Lucia."
• Stock 305: "Style various unique and exclusive looks for Jason and Lucia at Stockyard’s premiere destination for elevated streetwear."
• Electric Fang Tattoo: "Choose from over 50 signature tattoos for both Jason and Lucia — all designed by the artist collective FAILE at Stockyard’s most iconic ink bar."
• One-Eyed Willie's: "Visit Lake Leonida’s storied mod shop, specializing in off-road modifications and hand-painted automotive artistry."

So, as you can see, the $20 upgrade unlocks an absolute ton of stuff. Should a lot of this have been part of the base game? Yes, yes it should. All I can really say is purchase accordingly or, hey, not at all.

We've been talking about it for years and yet we're still waiting to hear when GTA 6 will launch on PC. History says it will probably be around a year after the console launch and that Rockstar probably won't even confirm a PC release date until next year either. How deep into the Leonida weeds can I get trying to divine an answer? At least deep enough to get WASTED by rogue wildlife, probably.

When might the GTA 6 PC release date be?

The PC release date for GTA 6 likely won't be before November 2027. That's my best guess based on the timeline of Rockstar's past PC ports, because so far it hasn't even given an estimate for a PC launch window.

For its last three major releases (including RDR2), the delay from console launch to PC has ranged from 7 months (GTA 4) to 19 months (GTA 5), though Rockstar's original plan before delays was about 14 months between console and PC for GTA 5.

Adding insult to injury, it would be in keeping with its playbook for Rockstar to not announce a PC release date until well after the console version has been out. It confirmed a PC version of GTA 4 the summer of 2008, several months after the console launch. It did nearly the same with GTA 5, launching on consoles in September 2013, announcing a GTA 5 PC release date in summer 2014, and then delaying the PC version several times into 2015—yes, it launched on two console generations before coming to PC. With RDR2 it just straight up waited a year after the console launch to confirm what we all knew: RDR2 would come to PC, giving us just a month's notice.

So not only will GTA 6 probably not launch on PC until the back half of 2027, Rockstar may not even deign to give us a date until sometime next year either.

Rockstar's past PC port timelines

*Not to be confused with the version formerly known as GTA 5 Enhanced Edition which was the next gen console launch on November 18, 2014. My brain hurts.

Why is Rockstar still not prioritizing PC launches?

Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick has been giving some seriously mixed signals to PC players over the past year. In November 2025 Zelnick said that the games industry is "moving towards PC and business is moving towards open rather than closed."

Then in February 2026 he said "We have seen PC become a much more and more important part of what used to be a console business, and I wouldn't be surprised to see that trend continue." That sure seemed like a promising attitude.

However, in May 2026 Zelnick said "Rockstar always starts on console because I think with regard to a release like that you're judged by serving the core," and referred to console players as its "core consumer." In the same interview he guestimated that PC could account for 45-50% of the sales on a "major launch" for Take-Two. So we know, as presumably does Zelnick, that any claim that PC isn't the "core" audience for GTA 6 is total baloney.

Why, then, does Rockstar continue to hold back its PC launches? Our own Ted Litchfield called it two years ago: There's really only one reason for Rockstar to release Grand Theft Auto 6 later on PC. Zelnick isn't going to come out and say "because you suckers will buy it twice" but I think we all pretty instinctively know that's what the suits think of us.

We're still some five months from the final release of the oft-delayed Grand Theft Auto 6 and yet there is somehow still a lot of fuss about the fact that GTA 6 pre-orders have gone live today. QUICK! GO GET YOUR TICKET STUB SO YOU CAN HAVE YOUR DIGITAL CODE IN-HAND AND PRE-LOAD A FEW DAYS BEFORE NOVEMBER 19!

Yeah, I mean it's not even like if you pre-order the game today that you're going to be getting any physical media. The box-fresh version still only comes with an Xbox or PlayStation download code. Because yes, there is no PC version even announced.

We've been running the quiz for a few days now, but we want to know how you PC Gamer readers are feeling about this: Will you be buying GTA 6 on console or will you be waiting for the PC version whenever that arrives? Hit the quiz below and hit us up in the comments, too.

But if you really feel the need to get your game downloaded a few days early—and can't rely on yourself to remember the biggest game of the past few years is about to release—then you can pre-order either the standard or ultimate editions today, for either $80 or $100 (£70 or £90).

And what do you get with the different editions? The basic, or standard, edition gets you the base game and a little extra FOMO in the shape of some paywalled in-game stores. This is the biggest bone of contention here, because while everyone's used to seeing in-game items reserved for pre-orders or special editions, we've not really seen parts of a game itself being roped off unless you pay the extra $20.

I'm with Mollie on this, I'm kinda pissed about actual stores within the game not being available to someone who has already dropped a whole lot of cash on the game by purchasing the expensive basic version.

I'm sure it'll all get unlocked at some point for console folk, though I'm kinda hoping that when the game finally comes out on PC it will actually be the ultimate edition. There will surely be a host of extra fidelity tweaks, and hopefully those extra perks (the vehicle modding shops, tattoists, boutiques, and the hair salons) will be available as standard, too.

I'm also hopeful we'll get some shiny path tracing mode, extra NPC volume to fill out Vice City, and DLSS 5, of course. I can already feel the hairs on the back of your neck bristling as you read that….

On the plus side, you've probably got another 18 months or so of either saving up for that big GPU upgrade or hoping for memory and storage prices to start to come down.

Here at PC Gamer, we're all very excited about Grand Theft Auto 6—given it's one of the biggest videogame events of the decade. Rockstar games are becoming an increasingly rarer milestone that seems determined to bring some new big-swing advancement in tech. For instance, gorgeous graphics that're pretty enough to send me into an existential crisis.

Given preorders went up today, you might think that has us all a-flutter with excitement. But 'lo, what's this? It's not coming for PC? Phooey!

Back in 2026, Strauss Zelnick, the CEO of Take-Two and occasional philosopher, told Bloomberg that "Rockstar always starts on console because I think with regard to a release like that you're judged by serving the core".

The implication that we're both not Rockstar's core consumer base. Left out in the rain, looking sad and glassy-eyed from under our collective umbrella while across the way console players giggle while crashing a helicopter into a building or something.

I echo PC Gamer's own Andy Chalk—and most of our staff—when I say: Hey, what the hell? I can't think of a real advantage, aside from maybe giving your developers more time to optimise and iron out launch day bugs, to abstaining. After all, PC gaming's one of the biggest growing markets in this massive industry.

And I mean, sure, maybe we're a little sore about the fact our coverage'll be impacted by the fact most of us don't have consoles—some of us do, and they'll be working tirelessly for your benefit, but certainly not the lion's share. But even those of us with the honoured videogame boxes are going to be felt put-out by Zelnick's artificial cool kids club.

There's a sort of sorrow to all of this by way of the fact that GTA 6 is likely to be one of the prettiest games in recent memory, and yet it'll be leashed to crummy hardware. Our online editor, Fraser Brown, rallied against the subpar experience of gaming on console as compared to his beastly rig, and I have no doubt will have a grumble about having to play on a blurrier resolution than his 4090s, which shall be sitting in his PC the entire time, neglected.

But even I, as a 3060 peasant without a console, don't think Rockstar's in the right on this one. GTA 5's modding community is lively and vibrant and a boon to the game, and—oh, what's that? Rockstar's been clamping down on non-official mod support? Ah, that makes more sense, then.

The cynic in me also wonders (loudly, in this very article) it has something to do with GTA 6's pricing. In case you're out of the loop, the ultimate edition of the game will feature some core perks hacksawed off and stuffed into its $100 price-point, which is a huge shame.

In a hypothetical scenario, enterprising pirates or modders on PC could find a way to circumvent these artificial barriers—it could be argued that Rockstar really wants folks to splash out for that $20 markup.

Or, I have to concede, stubbornly sticking to its guns. Rockstar games rarely come with day-one PC releases to, as Zelnick said, serve its core audience of console gamers. But also, in the very same interview, Zelnick said that "with regard to a big title, PC can be 45, 50% of the sales." God damnit.

Well, Zelnick, I've got some numbers of our own. We've been running a poll, linked below, that'll be closing on the 28th of June.

Let's take a look at the numbers at the time of writing, shall we? And—oh, 39% of you aren't buying it at all. Alright, that's a pretty substantial amount of PC Gamer readers that don't like GTA, fair does.

But just 13% are excited enough to go for the console release and, as our own Ted Litchfield theorised, potentially provide Take-Two with a double-dip of sales when the PC version comes out. Now, obviously our deeply scientific and accurate polls aren't, some might argue, conclusive snapshots of PC demographics.

It does, however, mean that the majority of you who are excited about GTA 6 will be just like us website staff: Sadly gazing through a window as one of the biggest gaming events of the decade passes us by, because Zelnick doesn't think we're a core audience. Despite accounting for 45% of his business' sales. I'm gonna have an aneurysm.

• We're keeping track of all the Amazon Prime Day PC gaming deals here

• We're keeping track of all the Amazon Prime Day PC gaming deals here

Grand Theft Auto 6 is still five months away (on consoles, remember, no PC release date yet) and preorders won't be live until later this week. But that apparently hasn't stopped numerous websites from promising eager fans that they can get early access to the game right now for a price. Lest there be any doubt, cybersecurity company Malwarebytes is warning that they're nothing but a scam.

A report posted today says "a new wave of scam websites" are offering "VIP early access" to the next GTA in exchange for a grossly inflated price of "a few hundred dollars," payable in cryptocurrency. Malwarebyte also shared a few images of the scam sites in question.

One site leverages GTA 6, Mr. Beast, and Lego all at the same time—a powerful combo, no doubt.

But of course, there's nothing to be had. Worse, because payments are made in crypto, there's no way to recover or report the loss. The money is gone and there's no getting it back.

Stefan Dasic of Malwarebytes described GTA 6 as "the perfect bait" for scams like this in his report. Grand Theft Auto is among the biggest game franchises in the world, with hundreds of millions of copies sold, and it's been 13 years since GTA 5. The hype for GTA 6 is enormous, and "scammers simply exploit that excitement."

You might think that this sort of thing is way too obvious for anyone to fall for, but as a wise old friend once told me, you don't know what you don't know. I've been online for almost as long as 'online' has existed, and I write about this stuff for a living—but a 14-year-old with a smartphone, no matter how hip to the scene he may appear, might be tempted to take a shot.

But it's not just kids, to be clear. As the report points out (and as we've all no doubt seen once or twice in our lives), burning desire can overwhelm chilled caution, and verbiage used on these scam sites encourage impulsive decisions. They also look pretty legit, and the situation is further confused by the fact that preordering a more expensive edition for "advance access" to a new release is very common for videogames now.

• We're keeping track of all the Amazon Prime Day PC gaming deals here

Dasic said Malwarebytes doesn't have information on how many people are visiting these sites but the bottom line is that, like all scams, they persist because they work.

"I am amazed when I see which scams managed to fool people," Dasic told PC Gamer. "There will always be at least one person that will fall for this—either being too young, or too immature, probably not well informed and just wanting to be the first to have their hands on something before everyone else."

Just about everyone is hot to trot for GTA 6, but keep this in mind and keep a clear head: There is no Grand Theft Auto 6 early access at this point. If Rockstar does announce some kind of premium "advance access" for GTA 6, you should only buy it from official sources. And last but certainly not least, if a site is insisting that you pay with crypto it's time to put your hand on your wallet and head for the door. (That last one is pretty much a universal truth, though, so apply it across the board.)

Grand Theft Auto 6 is set to launch for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on November 19, and preorders—official, real, not-a-scam preorders—will begin on June 25. We're still waiting for the PC version to be announced.

I got pretty excited when I saw the gator on the recently announced Grand Theft Auto 6 cover art yesterday, besides from being an icon of Florida, they're also just cute lil guys. But it seems that I'm not as big of a fan as I thought, because there's something not right about that gator.

"Something seemed off with the number of teeth the gator on the cover had (of course it did—why didn't I think of that) so I did a count and it seems the gator has 60 teeth," ITehJelleh says in a Reddit post. For those of you who are thinking "So what", first off, you're just as uncultured as I am, and secondly that's a big difference to how many gators are meant to have.

gta6 from r/GTA6/comments/1u9tdlr/mistake_with_the_gta_6_cover

"Alligators normally have 74-80 teeth so this is way below the normal amount," ITehJelleh adds. Gators do also go through something called continuous replacement, which sees them constantly lose and regrow teeth, they can apparently go through 2,000 to 3,000 teeth in a lifetime. So maybe this gator is just having a rough one, or just a juvenile .

On the flip side, it could just be a silly mistake—but one that has rocked players to their core. "Unplayable," one fan jokes. "This is just going to be another Cyberpunk release." Others join in voicing their disappointment with Rockstar—"pre-order cancelled"—and who can blame them? Gators are sacred.

But how could Rockstar make such a simple mistake? Well, ITehJelleh thinks it could all be part of something bigger: "Could it potentially have a meaning?" Yeah, ok, I'll play ball. What if we're getting another trailer in 60 days, on August 17, or maybe there'll be 60 different dirt bikes to collect in-game. What if the game opens with you having to fight 60 gators? Not sure of any of that really sticks though, maybe it really was just a simple error. Anyways, I'm just going to stick with the moon for all my GTA theories.

It may sound impossible, but the wait for Grand Theft Auto 6 is almost over. After a couple of delays, Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick has reassured fans that GTA 6 will release on November 19 this year, and now we have the pre-order date to prove it.

Rockstar just randomly—hold on a second, let me check what moon phase we're in—yup, randomly announced that pre-orders for GTA 6 will start on June 25, which is just a week away. Everyone, try to keep your composure.

Alongside the pre-order announcement came the official cover art reveal. It's nothing particularly surprising, as it follows the same design we've seen before with multiple fluorescent images spliced onto the cover. It's almost a shot for shot recreation of Vice City's cover art, with a couple of images swapped around.

This time we've got our main protagonists, Jason Duval and Lucua Caminos, a speed boat, a sports car, a helicopter, a hot chick, and then a couple of dudes with guns and motorbikes. Oh, there's also gator, because Florida—I mean Leonida.

Then, if you look extra close at the tattoo under the woman's bikini strap you can see it reads "Vice Baby". This checks out as GTA 6 takes place in the fictional state of Leonida, which is based off of Florida, and will let players return to the sunny streets of Vice City, the fictional city which is based off of Miami.

But aside from nitpicking at the details, players just seem elated to have any new information thrown their way, which is understandable considering we haven't had anything major since GTA 6's second trailer which came out over a year ago now. But now all we have to do is wait one week for pre-orders to open and then 21 more weeks for the game to release—easy!

If you were waiting for GTA 6 to drop when it should have done on May 26 (well, on console at least), you were probably more than a little perturbed by its delay to *checks watch* no time soon, i.e. November. That's to allow Rockstar to "finish the game with the level of polish you have come to expect and deserve." Frustrating, but fair enough, we can wait.

But if you aren't content waiting, what's to do? 'Nothing at all' is what probably comes to most people's minds. But not Ziwen's. No, that would be far too simple for the AI start-up entrepreneur, who has decided to "beat the real GTA 6 to launch" (via X user Fashion Ruined My Life).

"Day 1 of building GTA 6. Still feels fake typing that out. Upgraded to Claude Max 20x just for this... No studio, no publisher. Just whoever shows up... The goal: beat the real GTA 6 to launch. Ambitious, probably stupid, doing it anyway. If you can model, code, build levels, or write music and lore, come join. Looking for a couple contributors to cook this."

This is it; this is what the brave new world of AI and vibe coding has brought us. The sheer brass, the gall, the bravery to stand up and say, 'I will make GTA 6, and I'll do it before November.' I love it. I hate that I love it, but I do.

I won't spoil the whole journey, which is of course still ongoing, but just to give some teasers for Ziwen's project:

After progressing from day one's Tic-Tac-on-a-field, day two takes a Roblox-esque character to a Roblox-esque world with jittery floors.

Day four involves a cinematic with alligators falling from the sky. And gameplay of a character doing his best impression of Edward Cullen in daylight.

Day six—the latest update as of the time of writing—is more of the same, but there's a "real main menu", a loading screen, and the "whole front-end wired end to end."

Things are already at a point where they're requiring development to get a little more serious, though:

"We've been building in Godot the whole way, it's starting to show its limits on the AAA stuff. So this week I'm going to go test Unity to see if we can get the actual game into AAA stuff as well. For a game built by a loop of agents, the only question that matters is which one they can read, edit, and push on their own. Godot's good at that. Unity might be better, with way more assets off the market. I'm going to find out... I'll report back which engine they build faster in."

Godspeed, Unity. May the AI agents treat you well.

Someone has overdosed, so said the panicked man running down the street towards the infirmary. I follow, pushing through the red swing doors into the hospital reception area, and find a family huddled together in the adjacent waiting room. What happened, I ask. And I'm politely, but no less promptly, told to mind my own business.

They're right, of course. Because if this scenario were to unfold in real life, despite my best intentions, random strangers are indeed entitled to privacy. I should admire their manners in such a moment of distress, truth be told. Herein lies my first distinction that separates hyper-serious text-only Grand Theft Auto roleplay, and the fast-paced, voice-based servers I'm otherwise familiar with.

New world order

I've spent years cooking up off-the-wall roleplay encounters in the voice-based GTA 5 roleplay platform FiveM, and have revelled in the breakneck speed in which most of these encounters unfold. From robbing banks while posing as a journalist to running a nightclub as an active vampire, FiveM, in my opinion, is at its very best in its immediate experiences, where spontaneity and on-the-fly exchanges make and/or break each set-piece.

With speed comes variety—roleplayers definitely take themselves seriously in the throes of VOIP-only spaces, but if something goes awry or doesn't quite go to plan, the next tale is never far from the horizon. This is true of FiveM, alt:v, NoPixel, New Day, and the wealth of RP platforms whose servers tend towards all of the above, and while there definitely are players in it for the long haul, there is a strong element of pick-up-and-play to the majority of sessions I've ever experienced.

The opposite is true in text-only servers. I've long been intimidated by the seriousness of these spectrums, to the point where I've pretty much avoided them entirely. And while I've barely dipped my toes into the narrative-heavy scene at this stage, I've nevertheless been blown away by what I've seen so far. Stepping away from FiveM et al's action-oriented roleplay, what I've found has been more thoughtful, more precise and more longer-form; where stories gradually develop and actions have genuine consequences.

The hospital example above is but one pretty superficial example, but I've played in enough VOIP servers to confidently suggest the same scenario would have unfolded like a high-drama soap opera.

As a plumber who recently moved to Los Santos following the death of his family, I'm currently pursuing an honest life. The allure of the city's criminal underbelly is there bubbling away under the surface—this is GTA, after all—but my most enjoyable RP experience last week was installing a bathroom suite for a young student couple in Vinewood. It was a nice evening by the time I'd sealed the last fitting, so I decided to walk home. I chatted to a man busking on the edge of Union Square about the stock market. I went home and had an early night. It was lovely.

And so here I am, pausing the monotony of real life in the city of Glasgow to lose myself in the monotony of pretend life in the city of Los Santos. Perhaps it's an age thing. Perhaps it's getting older and realising that the unbridled chaos of vanilla GTA Online—where it's sometimes difficult to walk 10 paces without being sniped or stabbed or blown to pieces by a flying motorcycle equipped with homing missiles—is sometimes too much. Perhaps it's realising that the meme-inspiring, TikTok-fueling, fast-pace-favouring RP scene is fun but exhausting.

And perhaps it's realising that there's something endearing about being content just existing in a quieter slant on San Andreas—where today it's about fitting toilets, and in six months it could be about owning my own plumbing firm and treating someone else to the pleasure of working for me.

In GTA Online I have an arsenal of guns and umpteen illicit businesses. In FiveM I have an unhinged personality and a thousand faces. In GTA World I have a backstory and a civilian's dream.

I've written before about just how much I love Grand Theft Auto's radio stations. Rockstar has an incredible knack for musical curation, and there's nary been a track in those games that I haven't vibed with. Hell, I've spent most of my life as a raging emo in England and I absolutely loved the country-bumpkin-as-hell K-Rose back in San Andreas.

I've also got a huge soft spot for Non Stop Pop in Grand Theft Auto 5—Cara Delevingne's borderline robotic London accent cutting through nostalgic bangers from the '80s, '90s, and '00s like Amerie's 1 Thing and Pet Shop Boys' West End Girls, later introducing some more modern tracks like Lorde's Tennis Court and M83's Midnight City.

Every game in the series is always home to a huge spread of stations that cover just about every genre you could wish for, and it gives Rockstar so much room to play around with iconic tunes and more niche things you'd only otherwise hear from your mate-of-a-mate-of-a-mate-of-a-mate at a 4am after drinks in some stranger's diabolically tiny flat.

With Grand Theft Auto 6 set to take place in a modern-day Vice City, that gives the developer even greater liberty to go ham on which tracks it includes. We've got a whole Covid era of TikTok songs that feel like they'd fit right into the Florida-adjacent Leonida (but please no Dance Monkey, I beg of you), plus a wealth of untapped 80s and 90s tunes that would be fitting of this digital sunshine state.

We've got over a decade's worth of artists to pick from since Rockstar last added songs to Grand Theft Auto 5 who I think would be incredible for some late-night drives—PinkPanthress, Charlie XCX, Kaytranada, and Tame Impala come to mind as just a few who would absolutely bang in the new game. And my inner emo would love to see bands like Fontaines D.C., Don Broco, and Spiritbox appearing in Rockstar's oft-criminally underutilised modern rock stations.

But what about you? Are there some of your favourite artists who you think would fit Grand Theft Auto 6's world of Leonida perfectly? Or are there tracks you hope make it in just because they're funny, or would annoy a mate of yours? Do you want TikTok brainrot tracks? Please say no to that one.

Whoever or whatever you've got in mind, be sure to drop a comment and let us know the artists and tracks on your personal wishlist. After all, we're gonna be spending an awful lot of time in cars in that game—the songs better be good!

Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Take-Two Interactive (which owns Rockstar, as well as several other companies) has a pretty middling view on AI. He's not purely against it (of course not, he's a CEO), but he's at least been relatively realistic about not only its potential, but also what its adoption will mean for the company as a whole.

Those are comments echoed in an investors meeting (shared here by YouTuber FunThere) wherein Zelnick commented on a hypothetical put forward by another tech bigwig that AI would let a team of three people make a GTA. Zelnick takes issue with the idea that "therefore they will make a hit that's as big as GTA, and there's zero evidence for that."

He continues: "Making hits seems to get harder and harder and harder as entertainment industries mature, we do not have a monopoly on hit creation … Arrogance is the enemy of continued success. I don't believe for a minute that technological advances give someone else an edge or give us an edge.

"It's just the toolset, it's available to everyone. The key thing is that all of this is gonna be totally commoditised. Show me one AI company—just one—who's offering their services or products to companies on an exclusive basis. They don't exist. So when that executive has that button to push, I'll have the same damn button."

Zelnick then gives certain studios the side-eye: "The folks at Rockstar seem to be able to make these massive hits, and lots of other people have tried. Lots and lots including former Rockstar employees—and so far they haven't been able to do it."

He doesn't mention it by name, but it's hard to imagine a higher-profile, recent example of what he's talking about that isn't MindsEye. Here we have a game put together by former Rockstar North president Leslie Benzies' studio, which has spent the past few months trying to convince itself and the public that internal saboteurs are responsible for the fact its first proper game isn't good.

Also by making a DLC where they vaguepost about the supposed saboteurs which, wouldn't you know it, also kinda sucks. Either way, that's gotta sting.

Still, that's not a reason to grow complacent: "Doesn't mean they can't in the future, by the way, we're always running scared. It won't be technology that changes the game. That won't be the change. What'll change is that some extraordinarily creative individual or individuals are gonna show up and do something astonishing.

"Our goal is to get those people to work within the Take-Two system, if we fail to do that? We fail. If we continue to be the home of creativity, the company that welcomes and encourages and supports and finances the best talent in the business, then the rest will take care of itself."

Grand Theft Auto 6's impending arrival has left other developers worried about how their own game will fare in the face of one of the most anticipated launches of all time. It looks like Remedy's new CEO, Jean-Charles Gaudechon, isn't one of them.

Chatting to The Game Business, Gaudechon is pretty sanguine about the whole thing, despite it serving as steep competition for any action game launching in 2026, including Control Resonant.

“It’s a year, I believe, that’s going to raise the tide,” Gaudechon says. “It’s going to put the spotlight even more on games than maybe in past years. Hopefully [GTA] will sell consoles. And raise the tide for all the players out there."

It's an optimistic perspective, but also a pretty practical one. While, yes, GTA 6 is going to be a massive launch, sucking all the oxygen out of the room, it's still just one game. Even with GTA Online, most players will finish the campaign and then be looking for new things.

I've pretty much shelved my PS5, but since that's going to be the only way I'll be able to play GTA 6, since the PC version hasn't even been announced yet, I'll be dusting off the console. Maybe a lot of you will be, as well. Which might also inspire you to keep playing on it, maybe picking up Control Resonant.

I suspect it's also going to attract folk who skipped this console generation initially. And they might stick around after.

“[For us], it’s less about trying to make your money back in a few days," Gaudechon says. "Now you’ve got multiple ways to have a longer tail. It’s going to be fun. You can expect quality from us. You can expect a voice that will cut through the noise. Expect us to be as loud as we can and hopefully pique people’s interest."

In the interview, Gaudechon also discussed the reaction to his appointment in February—there were concerns about his time at EA working on live service games and sports betting platforms—and the need to make cross-media deals to build up Remedy's franchises like Alan Wake and Control.

The Rage:MP multiplayer platform for Grand Theft Auto 5 says it will begin a "structured shutdown" after receiving a cease-and-desist order from GTA publisher Take-Two Interactive.

The news of the looming closure was shared by the admin team in the Rage:MP forums (via Dextero): "Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive have made it clear that FiveM is the only authorized platform for GTA 5 multiplayer modding, as defined in their Platform License Agreement (PLA). In accordance with that policy, and at Take-Two's request, Rage:MP will begin a structured shutdown process. We are asking all server owners to wind down their operations and migrate to FiveM."

FiveM was the big daddy of multiplayer customization modding platforms for Grand Theft Auto 5, enabling players to engage with the game in ways that Rockstar probably didn't envision—like trying to start a GTA Online fight club and ending up with a shirtless gang called The Friendly Boys, for instance, or becoming a big game trophy hunter and then getting murdered in the forest by a psycho who takes issue with your hobbies. (I guess that boy wasn't so friendly after all.)

Rockstar put considerable effort into banning FiveM for violating its policies as "an unauthorized alternate multiplayer service that contains code designed to facilitate piracy," but eventually (possibly after it noticed all the money trucks that kept rolling by) it relented and bought the Cfe.rx team that makes it instead. In 2025, Rockstar announced Nopixel V, "the next evolution of the GTA 5 Roleplay experience," and now, inevitably, it's also the only permissible GTA 5 roleplay experience.

Rage:MP admins said as a result of Take-Two's request, public access to its server toolkit has been discontinued and no new community servers will be accepted; current owners of Rage:MP servers are encouraged to migrate to FiveM as soon as possible. On June 1, the Rage:MP public server listing will be shut down, and on August 31, everything else goes away: The game client and server toolkit will no longer be available or supported, and all backend infrastructure will be shut down.

"We know this is tough news for everyone—both developers and players," the team wrote in their farewell message. "As FiveM is now Rockstar Games' official platform for modding-based experiences, we've done our best to give you extra time to move your servers to their new home, and we will continue to do everything we can to make the switch over as smooth as possible.

"All of us have put a huge amount of time and energy into building Rage:MP. Thank you for being part of this journey and for everything you've done to help multiplayer grow. Rage:MP was always defined more by the community than by the codebase."

Do you remember where you were just over a year ago, on May 6, 2025? That's when Rockstar released its second trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6 and also confirmed its updated release date: May 26, 2026. Neither can I, but I do know I was excited as all hell alongside every other gamer, and that's what makes today so painful.

A few months went by before Rockstar made the announcement that the floodgates to Leonida wouldn't open on May 26, instead delaying it for a second time to November 19, 2026, to "allow us to finish the game with the level of polish you have come to expect and deserve."

It's never a bad idea to give developers more time to polish a game, and as Take-Two's CEO Strauss Zelnick previously said: "we've never regretted [a delay] in retrospect." But that doesn't mean the delay didn't leave a mark. Something that plenty of fans have reflected on, especially today.

If you dare venture over to GTA 6's subreddit you'll find a bevy of despairing fans, all mourning what could have been had Rockstar not delayed GTA 6 for the second time. People are reposting Rockstar's initial post about the May 26 release date, grasping at a reality that's no longer there.

There's a mountain of depressing videos. We've got Tobey Maguire's breakdown in Pawn Sacrifice, Al Pacino screaming his lungs out, and an obligatory James Gandolfini scene from The Sopranos.

Today was supposed to be the day for us all to rejoice. 🥺 from r/GTA6

Some dude even got all dressed up in their Sunday best and started queuing outside of GameStop: "I'm waiting in front of GameStop until it opens because they said that the game comes out today but I'm the only one here. I don't get it. I thought that everyone was excited for this game."

"Today was supposed to be the day for us all to rejoice," another player says. "Let's just pray there's no more delays." Well the good news is there won't be any more delays, that is if Zelnick is to be believed (I'd say that's a safe bet). And while I'm not sure I believe all the theorists claiming that Rockstar'll give fans some more scraps to chew on because today is such a special day, at least we only have to wait 176 days until its release—oh god, that's a long time.

Rockstar parent Take-Two Interactive has been adamant that the November 19 release date for Grand Theft Auto 6 is on track, but doubts have lingered: The game has already been delayed twice, after all. But at this point it looks solid: With just six months to go, Take-Two reaffirmed the date in today's FY2026 financial report, and said it expects to make a lot—and let me emphasize, a lot—of money on it.

"We believe fiscal 2027 will establish new record levels of operating performance driven by the November 19th launch of Grand Theft Auto 6, along with strong execution across our portfolio," Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said. "We expect to sustain this higher level of scale, generate strong cash flows, and deliver long-term shareholder value as we release our robust development pipeline, continue to optimize our live services and capitalize on new business opportunities."

Take-Two does indeed have a lot of very valuable games and properties to its name (come on, BioShock), but GTA is the unrivalled money machine. Consider: Take-Two reported $6.72 billion in revenues for its 2026 fiscal year, exceeding the high end of its guidance range—basically, what it expected to make in the year. Take-Two's guidance for the 2027 fiscal, though, is $8-$8.2 billion, a year-over-year hike of more than $1 billion.

"FY27 is poised to be a breakout year for Take-Two, led by the November 19th release of Grand Theft Auto 6—arguably, the most anticipated entertainment property of all time, and we are excited that Rockstar Games will start their marketing campaign this summer," Take-Two said.

Which makes for an easy segue into the "no news" part of the report: No trailer 3 today, no information on price, and the biggest 'no' of all, no confirmation of GTA 6 on PC.

Does any of that matter? If you're reading this, it's very likely you've already made up your mind about whether you're going to buy GTA 6 (you are), whether you care how much it costs (you don't), and whether you're cranky about this shoddy treatment of PC gamers because you're going to buy it on console on day one anyway (I remain cranky, but you do you). But as a matter of simply wanting to know what the hell is going on? Yeah, I think we're all pretty damn eager for that.

Summer, for the record, starts on June 21. I don't expect Take-Two is going to kick GTA 6 marketing off on that particular day just because Strauss Zelnick said "summer," but I'll be watching, just in case.

Last week, Best Buy sent emails to affiliates that teased a May 18 kick-off for Grand Theft Auto 6 preorders. The emails were presumably sent in error, but that didn't necessarily mean that the date was wrong: If GTA 6 is on target for its November 19 console release date, it wouldn't be shocking for pre-orders to start soon.

Alas, it is May 18 and no Grand Theft Auto 6 preorder button has appeared, and no new trailer has dropped, which some assumed would happen alongside the expected reveal of the price and preorder bonuses.

The day isn't over, but if it were going to happen today, it probably would've by now, I'm sorry to say. We'll update this article if that changes.

Over on the GTA 6 subreddit, users are passing around the "Fell For It Again Award" as expectations have once again been dashed.

I think we probably will get a preorder announcement, or at least a new trailer, relatively soon. Last year's trailer came in May, and it'd be typical of Rockstar to preempt Summer Game Fest with big news rather than participate directly. SGF kicks off on June 5.

I've heard rumours. Whispers of an underground rave for the ages, deep within the bowels of one of GTA Online's myriad entertainment venues, away from the prying eyes of the LSPD. The question is: where?

As a child of the '90s, I was a touch too young for the techno scene that swept the UK in the early stretch of the same decade, where community-led DIY club nights saw revellers packed into hatchback cars like sardines, windows down and ears pricked, following the rhythmic beats of a bass drum reverberating from a random field somewhere off the M6.

I was around instead for the post-millennium dance music movement, frequenting the likes of The Arches and the Sub Club in Glasgow on a weekly basis during my formative years, and spending every summer in Ibiza. GTA 5's After Hours update of 2018, then, was literally music to my ears with the likes of the Blessed Madonna, Tale of Us and Solomun—all of who feature in-game—among my favourite real-world DJs.

Now 40 years old, I've since hung up my dancing shoes—but as a one-time old-school raver, I've longed for, but have invariably struggled to find, a Grand Theft Auto roleplay scene slant on popular IRL events filled with like-minded soft shoe shufflers.

Enter Roleplay UK's 'BOILER ROOM', a fan-led GTA-inspired take on the real-world event of the same name, which ran its first ever night earlier this year. "No ticket raffles, No fighting, No egos," says the event's organiser Liam Miller. "Just people here for the love of music."

Turn it up

As a fellow techno enthusiast, Miller says he'd always wanted to launch an illegal rave inside GTA 5, and reckoned doing so within the game's RP scene made sense. After spending a fair chunk of time combing the Los Santos and Blaine County playground for the perfect spot—within the bounds of a map players have spent 13 years covering from pillar to post—the space beneath the Vanilla Unicorn strip club was deemed the prime location. After that, it was all about planning.

"One thing that was particularly enjoyable about running the event, and something I think worked really well, was taking the time to build everything up," Miller explains. "First off, I created a Tweedle account [an in-character social media app used within GTA RP servers to share in-character information] called "Boiler Room".

"I then started posting cryptic-style short and punchy posts with no context and without telling anyone it was me. Then I started putting up posters to draw more attention to the event, all pointing towards some sort of underground dance event coming up that was strictly invite-only.

"Now, in a world that's been explored every inch by most players, people tend to be lured in by what they don't know. 'Who is it?', 'Where is it?', that sort of thing, you know?"

Party planning

Indeed, the elusiveness of the event in its organisational phase lent it an air of exclusivity and intrigue that helped Miller sow the seeds firmly in his community. He snuck out of the woodwork to liaise with the heads of the server's organised crime outfits, for example, offering personal invites and ensuring only the most powerful players would have access to the underground initiative.

Then came the logistics. The food, the drink, the cost of it all in terms of in-server funds, the DJs, the photographers, and even, ahem, the less-than-legal wares that have perhaps been known to help hedonistic revellers enjoy nights like these that little bit more, both in-game and in the real world.

Miller says: "So, the planning was all done by me. Until the night itself, it was my baby, I steered it the way I wanted and planned it all out—and it was bloody stressful! I used a couple of Discord channels in order to organise all the food and drinks and how much I'd spend in-game, who I would order from, when the collections were to happen and all of those sorts of things.

"The next thing that made it a success was the drug NØISE, a custom narcotic brought in especially for the night. I can't thank the developers enough for this, especially BOBINZ. The server's Tiki Bar provided food and drink too, and without them I'd have been stumped—so a massive shout out to them."

Miller extends his praise to the staff at Roleplay.co.uk and their help in realising his vision from inception to execution. He adds: "I had thought of where in the city I wanted to host the event, but I needed decks and equipment set up and the staff took this way further than I could have imagined.

"They built me an interactive elevator behind a disused building that took us all down into a disused bunker, where they built a full club setting that I could use. With the secrecy around the event, the custom drug (which I roleplayed was coming in from overseas) and the fact we were telling people it wasn't just a standard MLO [map-loaded object], excitement was now high. So, a massive thanks to all the staff at Roleplay.co.uk."

Photography, such as the eye-catching imagery shared in this article, was captured by various members of the server's community—not least Just Shoot Photography—and security was, for the most part, handled by the Arms of Outcasts motorcycle club.

It just so happens that Miller is a sergeant at this particular MC, and his buddies helped ensure tensions stayed low while the energy remained high for the duration. With plenty of police roleplayers keen to shut down events such as these at the drop of a bat elsewhere on the server, maintaining order, Miller says, was especially important.

If I've said it once, I've said it a million times: I will never not be inspired by the boundless creativity that exists in the Grand Theft Auto roleplay scene.

From the first time I robbed a bank while pretending to be a journalist, to happening upon cool set-ups such as this one and reporting back from the outside looking in, I absolutely love how a game rooted in violence and crime continues to be stretched like pizza dough in some many different directions.

The arrival of GTA 6 will inevitably extend those horizons further than ever before, but in the shorter-term future, I can't wait to see what micro-scale events such as Miller's Boiler Room Los Santos do from here.

A quick glance at the event's still-active forum thread shows one player who was so inspired by the last outing, they've offered to livestream their own set at the next one. Whether or not that's possible remains to be seen—Miller is keen, but says there are some obstacles to be ironed out in order for it to happen—but what is nevertheless impressive is the broader cultural appeal the event has had within this community.

This, of course, captures the essence of techno culture on a much wider scale, and so to see that reflected in one of the most influential videogames of all time warms my old-school raving heart.

"I've gotta say, from a roleplay point of view, everyone really leaned into this," says Miller. "People didn't stop dancing the full time, and people were chatting about the made-up drug in the city for months afterwards—if I could get more in and things like that. It was really good and big love to the community."

With that same sense of nostalgia, then, my next question to Miller is one I've asked a thousand times in the wake of a killer rave: so, when's the next one?

"We're absolutely hoping to do another one!" he says. "This time with a bigger crowd, that would be sick—we counted 96 people at the first one, which is absolutely brilliant. But something more packed out than before with people just dancing and socialising, that'd be amazing.

"And as far as GTA 6 is concerned… Well, with roleplay and creative imagination, anything is possible."

The likelihood of another Grand Theft Auto 6 delay seems a whole lot less, well, likely now, as a reported leak out of Best Buy says preorders for the game—the most anticipated videogame in years, if you haven't been keeping score—will go live next week.

The leak was first reported by content creator Frogboyx1Gaming, who said on X (via Rockstar Intel) that an email sent to his Best Buy affiliate account revealed that preorders will go live on May 18. Things got serious when others chimed in to say they'd received the same email.

Another person has received the BestBuy GTA6 Preorder Email with video proof from r/GTA6

Affiliate links, simply put, are personalized links provided to websites, streamers, and content creators that enable them to earn a commission if one of their viewers orders a product using that link. We use them here at PC Gamer, too—here's our affiliate disclosure, breaking down exactly how it works.

Emails like this give affiliate partners a heads-up on what's coming, so they can prepare for what's coming and maximize their output appropriately. I think it's a safe bet, though, that this particular email was not supposed to go out today—either that, or Best Buy has remarkable (and remarkably misplaced) faith in the gaming community to not leak things.

As with all leaks, this one should be taken with a grain of salt: It's possibly a mistake or a placeholder date, and for those who enjoy conspiracy theorizing, it could even be a bunch of influencers coordinating on a little bit of fun with the tightly-wound GTA community.

That said, it looks legit enough to be worthy of attention: Rockstar parent Take-Two Interactive said earlier this year that "launch marketing" for Grand Theft Auto 6 will begin this summer, and that's getting awfully close. The May 18 date is also just a few days ahead of Take-Two's next quarterly report, which is set for May 21, and having GTA 6 fully firmed-up leading into that—as much as possible in an uncertain world, at least—could eliminate a lot of investor and analyst uncertainty.

Of course, all of this is of limited relevance to us here in the world of mouse and keyboard, because Grand Theft Auto 6 hasn't been announced for PC yet. Even so, May 18 will be a day worth watching for at least two reasons. One, if preorders do go live that day, the long-awaited third trailer will surely drop, hopefully with an actual look at the game, rather than just cinematic hype; and two, it will finally reveal the game's price, which has been the subject of speculation and hand-wringing for months now. Is the era of the $100 videogame finally upon us? (I don't think so, for the record, but $80 for the base edition won't surprise me in the least.)

Grand Theft Auto 6, for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, is set to launch on November 19. See you next week.

There's something fitting about a bygone zombie mod that simply refuses to die. That's exactly what Cheyron's Nazi Zombies is—a hybrid throwback to Call of Duty's earliest undead horde mode that's 10 years in the making and set within Grand Theft Auto 4.

I hardly need an excuse to return to GTA 4's faux slant on New York City, so at face value Cheyron's work is great fun. Re-filling the shoes of Niko Bellic with an assault rifle in-hand, fending off wave after wave of faceless bad guys feels as good now as it ever did decades ago; as does revisiting some of the game's iconic map locations, such as the Times Square-aping 'Star Junction' of Liberty City.

Beneath the familiar veneer of this fan-made project, though, sits something a wee bit more powerful: my warped perception of time. The first time a zombie horde mode made its way to the Call of Duty franchise was in World at War, which was released in 2008 just a few months after the fourth main series entry of Rockstar's enduring crime sim.

There have been 13 variations of COD's undead horde 'em up offshoot since, and so with this in mind, plus the fact Grand Theft Auto 4 just celebrated its 18th birthday, I suddenly feel very old. I had just turned 22 when GTA 4 arrived on consoles, and while we joke about how long Grand Theft Auto 6 has taken on its way to hitting store shelves, I'm now 40 and wondering where the hell the time has gone.

Anyway, lest I bore you further with my personal existential dread, know that the perfect tonic for all of the above lies within Cheyron's Nazi Zombies. Its rhythmic waves of virtual murder are simple yet effective, and I'm having loads of fun simply hanging out in a world that time hasn't quite forgotten. Cheyron says Nazi Zombies is 10 years in the making, having just released the project onto Nexus Mods.

Here's Cheryon themselves on their work: "A faithful recreation of Call of Duty Nazi Zombies in GTA 4. Relive the old magic. Try to beat your top score! Includes sounds and mechanics of Nazi zombies.

"Buy colas, buy new weapons at the box, play co-op with NPCs and go for headshots! Every level gets harder."

In-game as in life, am I right?

In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick spoke about the immense pressure for the game to succeed, given the publisher's massive investment into Rockstar's long-awaited crime caper. He described the risk the company's taking in a way that, unfortunately, I can only describe as going kinda hard.

"Development costs have gone up and up. And we really do aim to deliver the highest quality entertainment on Earth," Zelnick told Bloomberg. "And that is costly. And AI influence is not withstanding. We haven't seen those costs decline yet. Maybe we will. Maybe we won't."

The cost of triple-A development has been a hot button issue this console generation, with increasing technological and graphical complexity demanding correspondingly larger team sizes and bigger budgets. High-profile, expensive sales failures beg the question whether smaller team sizes, shorter development cycles, and cheaper games should be embraced as an alternative.

But Zelnick still wants the publisher to focus on blockbusters, and he seems to accept that you have to spend money to make money. “That's a high-stakes game for big boys only," said Zelnick, "And I'm cool with it.”

It's a turn of phrase that, quite frankly, tickled my fancy. It almost made up for the part of the interview where Zelnick said he sees Xbox and PlayStation as Rockstar's "core" audience, hence GTA 6's customary delayed launch on PC.

"We never claim success before it occurs," Zelnick said, before describing the company's strategy as, "We try to give them unlimited financial, creative human resources and then they aim to deliver perfection." And "unlimited" really seems to mean "unlimited," as evidenced by GTA 6's long gestation, several delays, and eye-watering estimated budget.

Business Insider provided a $1-$1.5 billion figure from anonymous industry analysts in its own feature on Zelnick, but this seems to be the low end of the GTA 6 budget ballpark. In a LinkedIn post from last August, before GTA 6 was delayed from May to November 2026, Josh Chapman of venture capital firm Konvoy cited a $2 billion estimated investment from Take-Two.

GTA 6 O'Clock newsletter writer Dan Dawkins argued that $3.4 billion is a more likely figure, factoring in preproduction and Rockstar's payroll over the last 6 years of development. If that's not a high-stakes game for big boys only, I don't know what is.

Back to Chapman and Konvoy, they predicted that Take-Two would break even within a month, assuming a $2 billion budget, and that the game would rake in $7.6 billion in total revenue within 60 days of launch⁠—and that's before you get to the long tail of sales GTA 6 will presumably have, if the previous game in the series is anything to go by.

New Day RP has just celebrated its fifth birthday, and now the GTA roleplay server has outlined its plans heading into 2026.

Before digging into the specifics of what's to come, it's worth saying up front that New Day RP might just be my favourite Grand Theft Auto roleplay server at the moment. For me, it's certainly the most accessible and rewarding, and, as someone now approaching their 10th year of farting around in GTA RP, I've been around the block a wee bit.

Yes, New Day offers law enforcement and emergency services—the same sought-after jobs that are commonplace in just about every RP server the world over—but you’re just as likely to find yourself simply drifting between regular community events such as open mic nights, themed gatherings, and the now-established Taco Tequila Tuesday.

On its forums, the New Day team points to ongoing work around governance systems—tweaks to elections, public services, and how departments interact—as well as continued backend improvements aimed at smoothing the day-to-day experience for players. There’s also a clear focus on supporting the server’s existing ecosystem, and expanding opportunities within departments such as Parks and Recreation.

To the latter end, here's an update from Viv Chopper, head of the server's San Andreas Parks Department: "As we move further into the year, I just wanted to share a few updates from the San Andreas Parks Department.

"We’re now coming to the end of our last Apprentice Ranger hiring round, and you’ve probably already started spotting some of our new Rangers out in the field! We’re really excited to have them join SAPD and are looking forward to seeing them settle into their new roles over the coming weeks.

"With that round nearly wrapped up, we’ll soon be turning our attention to Parks Employee recruitment. From Monday 23rd March, Parks applications will open and will work in a similar way to how we’ve just handled Ranger hiring. Applications will stay open until we’ve got enough in to begin reviewing, and then they’ll be paused while we work through that round.

"Once successful Parks Employee applicants have been brought onboard, they’ll have 30 days to complete their required training. After that, we’ll return to reviewing Ranger applications again."

Chopper adds that seasonal hunting, should this tickle your fancy, is now open—with those interested encouraged to find out more in this direction.

And so with so many GTA RP servers these days becoming increasingly complicated—sometimes with the best of intentions and with good results—there's something refreshing about the simplicity with which New Age handles itself. Whether you're after bite-sized sessions or marathon meet-ups, I recommend giving it a whirl. Here's to the next five years.

As the question of Grand Theft Auto 6's release date dies down (hopefully there won't be another delay), the question of how much it will go for is starting to pop up. Everyone seems to have their own theories, and while I think we'll be seeing a $100 price tag, Take-Two Interactive's CEO Strauss Zelnick has recently qualified that it'll be reasonable.

"Consumers pay for the value that you bring to them, and our job is to charge way way way less of the value delivery," Zelnick said at the Interactive Innovation conference (via IGN). “How you feel about something you buy is the intersection of the thing itself and what you pay for. Consumers need to feel like the thing itself is amazing and the price they were charged was fair for what they got.

"If you look at it through that lens, that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. But that isn’t the lens through which we look. Instead, we look at how do we deliver something amazing, and how do we make sure that what people pay for it feels very reasonable."

The only problem with this is that I don't think the CEO of Take-Two and someone whose net worth amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars would share my sentiment on what a 'reasonable' game price is.

Zelnick also broaches the idea that games have actually stayed quite cheap, mostly thanks to the fact that prices haven't risen with inflation over the last decade or so. Major releases have stayed at $60/$70 for quite some time now, which is impressive when compared to prices outside the industry.

While technically true, all that seems to me is Zelnick laying the groundwork for why GTA 6's standard edition will be priced higher than any other AAA game, I dread to think what its premium editions will cost. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, for now, at least, Zelnick seems slightly more concerned with GTA 6's reception rather than its price.

During the conference Zelnick confessed that he's "terrified" of the prospect of how on earth they'll be able to measure the success of GTA 6. Instead the team is just focusing on doing the best it can do to ensure it performs well and looks good.

"What we think about is making the most spectacular piece of entertainment on Earth, in history—and it’s a pretty daunting challenge," Zelnick adds. "If we do that, and if we’re of service to our customers, then the upside will take care of itself."

It may have taken 13 years, but you can finally explore a brand new slice of Grand Theft Auto. No, Grand Theft Auto 6 hasn't launched early. I'm referring to GTA: Carcer City, a new total conversion mod for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

GTA: Carcer City replaces San Andreas' massive map with a single metropolis, one that is inspired by (and shares the same name as) the city seen in 2003's Manhunt. Rockstar's grisly slaughter-fest is set in the same universe as Grand Theft Auto, which is one of those facts that I distantly recall learning at some point, but had for all intents and purposes forgotten in the years since.

In the context of Rockstar's alt-USA, Carcer City is located in its northeastern Rust Belt, taking visual cues from urban centres like Detroit, Cleveland and Pittsburgh—the metropolitan flavour of the month courtesy of a certain wildly popular medical drama. Its various districts include a skyscraper-strewn downtown area, a shipping port, an airport, and a more historic old town. According to its ModDB page, Carcer City also includes "all of the locations from the levels featured in Manhunt", which is a neat touch.

As for what kind of GTA experience Carcer City aims to deliver, the mod is set in 2001 and introduces a "brand new storyline" that aims for a "dark, immersive tone". That suggests that it'll be a little different from the caustic satire Rockstar has become known for, perhaps bridging the gap between GTA and Manhunt.

The video above shows some of Carcer City in action. It seems to play much as you'd expect a PS2 GTA to, a mixture of arcade-style open-world driving and getting into somewhat ropey gunfights. That's entirely on Rockstar though, and not a dig at the mod, which is clearly an impressive piece of work.

The version of Carcer City currently available to download is a demo, offering the full city to explore as well as "a taste of the storyline". There's no mention of when the mod might be finished, but given how long ambitious mod projects like this tend to take, I certainly wouldn't expect to see it before Grand Theft Auto 6 releases on November 19.

Welcome to the jungle. Guns N' Roses' 1987 hit may have been written following a chance exchange with a territorial New York City native some 40 years ago, but its hedonistic tone, themes and lyrics fit well within the Grand Theft Auto universe. The song itself even featured in GTA: San Andreas' in-game radio station, Radio X, and provided the soundtrack for one of SA's real-world promotional trailers on its road to release in the early 2000s.

Fast forward two decades and PauloJz has applied welcome to the jungle very literally to GTA 6. Because as we approach the console release of Rockstar's next criminal empire simulator—and continue to wistfully await concrete PC details—PauloJz and a dedicated crew of hobbyist digital nature observers have meticulously dissected every trailer, screenshot and piece of official artwork in their bid to catalogue all confirmed animal species in the game.

Posted on GTAForums, the GTA VI - Animals / Fauna Analysis thread is a veritable hivemind of research, educated guesses and speculation about the wildlife set for the upcoming iteration of Vice City and beyond.

"When I created the topic, based on the first trailer released, I had already identified some prominent animals, such as the sea turtles seen in the first frame of the 'Rockstar Presents' scene," explains PauloJz. "The main point of speculation was which group that species and genus belonged to, although I had already done some preliminary research."

As seen on screen

All of the above manifests in a delightfully intriguing, visually-led chronicle of all the bugs, bears and beasts set for the sunkissed shores of Leonida state. From the opening seconds of that first GTA 6 trailer, PauloJz and the wealth of thread contributors have highlighted each animal or creature's presence in any given scene, and have then posted their real-world likeness, time stamp where necessary and reasoning for inclusion.

You should obviously check out the thread in its entirety itself, but here's how some of that looks in practice:

Herring Gull (Larus Argentatus)

"Seen at the opening of the trailer, this species is quite prominent in the northern hemisphere. As it is a very common bird, we can find it on coasts, ports, islands, seas and landfills, looking for food, such as fish, garbage and carrion."

Loggerhead turtle (Caretta caretta)

"In the extreme bottom corner at 0:11, we can see her heading towards the beach. Very common in Palm Beach, it is the largest turtle in the region, reaching an incredible 2.13m in length. Their diet is limited to invertebrates, such as jellyfish, for example."

Miniature Pincher (cross between Schnauzer, Molossoids, Mountain Dogs and Swiss Cattle Dogs)

"Seen on the beach running with its owner, at 0:22, the miniature pincher comes from Germany. There's not much to say, it's just common in North and South America."

One thing I love about this precise level of comparing and contrasting is that each of PauloJz and the contributors' musings involves research and reasoning, despite the fact the thing they're analysing can appear on-screen for seconds, sometimes milliseconds, at a time. Naturally, these margins can create scope for error, but the openness of the community means that consensus is never far from their grasp.

PauloJz adds: "In my case, it's simpler to identify an animal in the scene. Unlike other topics, such as 'Mapping Vice City', where the community uses coordinate systems to identify and trace buildings, I only use visual information from the scene and, of course, a little research.

"But we don't always get it right the first time. There was a time when it was believed that there was a bear in the upper right corner of the Mount Kalaga screenshot, generating some minor debate about the image. Looking at the image today, it's noticeable that it's just a rock, and this becomes evident upon closer inspection.

"So far there haven't been any discoveries that have surprised the community, although I believe many interesting things may still emerge, it's just a matter of time."

After a string of high-profile delays, GTA 6's console variation is on course to arrive on November 19 of this year. At the time of writing that gives Rockstar just under eight months to drop some more footage and/or screens that may satisfy PauloJz's "many interesting things" prediction. Through the grapevine, he's heard that Rockstar developers have visited his GTAForums thread and is of the view those in charge of piecing the trailers together do so with one eye on delivering a state-of-the-art showcase, and another on sprinkling breadcrumbs with speculating communities like his in mind.

In any event, whether PauloJz and his crew of intrepid nature watchers get another pre-release trailer or not, once GTA 6 officially lands, their database is bound to blow up with every beauty and beast wandering the Leonida landscape photographed, filmed and filed.

"That's why I created the topic about wildlife and so many others, precisely so that, in the future, they can be revisited and visited by new people," says PauloJz. "Maybe by then I won't be here anymore to follow and update my topics, but I'm sure they will continue to exist, as part of this long journey.

"Perhaps by then I won't be here anymore to follow and update my topics, but I'm sure they will continue to exist as part of this long journey."

The Grand Theft Auto series has taken us to many corners of the United States, giving us somewhat satirical glimpses into a ridiculously violent, weird, and exaggerated world. But it's been 13 years since GTA 5 was released, and a lot has changed since then.

So much has changed, in fact, that Lester's voice actor from GTA 5, Jay Klaitz, seems to think that "the impact is taken out of GTA 6's initial landing" thanks to just how weird the world has become (via GamesRadar).

"Don't get me wrong," Klaitz says in an interview with El Dorado. "It's still fucking GTA. It's going to be massive. People will lose their shit. It's going to be huge, obviously. But it's a different world to the one 13 years ago when the last one came out. I mean, it's a very different world than it was even a year ago."

GTA 6 is set in the modern made-up state of Leonida which is based on Florida, including locations like Vice City and areas based on the Everglades, the Florida Keys, and more rural places like national parks. There's only been a couple of glimpses into what this will manifest into, but pretty much everything we've seen in these shows GTA 6 taking on the spiritual manifestation of 'The Florida Man', and the curse energy that exudes.

The first GTA 6 trailer depicts Leonida in all of its chaotic wonder. Complete with flashy concerts, pool top parties, alligator infested gardens, and a bunch of clips you'd probably watch on World Star. It seems as if there's plenty of ammo in Rockstar's arsenal as-is, but Klaitz points out yet again that what was ridiculous a decade ago doesn't really hit the same level nowadays.

"What seemed so far-fetched and insane just a short while ago now feels like just another day," Klaitz adds. "So maybe GTA 6 can't make that same splash as previous games, what we see happening in the real world is definitely going to make it harder for a GTA game to work those angles.

"That said, I don't know. Maybe that's bullshit. I know there will be plenty of commentary and satire woven into it. There's a lot of the Florida Man stuff and lots of territory like that still to cover."

The world may be an ever-increasingly strange and depressing place to live in, and that may make what we'll encounter in GTA 6 less wacky, but I'm still not worried. I have a feeling that GTA 6 will still come out with some S-tier lines and characters, it's just a matter of how the devs manage to do it.

I've changed my routine. Before now, my universal approach to combat in a no-guns GTA 5 Story Mode run was pretty straightforward. With the odds invariably weighed in my opponent's favour – simply because, you know, they have firearms and I don't – putting obstacles between myself and their line of fire was a given.

Vehicles, walls, trees, lampposts, in essence whatever piece of set dressing I could leverage to close the gap unscathed, before pouncing with a volley of fists and legs and headbutts.

Now, thanks to thalilmythos' Melee Executions mod, I am Ric Flair.

"Wooooo", I scream aloud as I contemplate a more contemporary wrestling reference having last watched during the Attitude era. Still, like a man possessed, I'm no longer lurking in the shadows as I face off against Madrazo's goons but instead charging down their sights, grabbing them by the waist and power slamming them into the Downtown Los Santos sidewalk.

I've long been obsessed with ragdoll physics in video games – from Garry's Mod to Baby Steps and everything in between – and there's something properly sumptuous about successfully landing the moves that define this compelling player-made monster, before sprawling out my foes on the concrete like vomit outside Clucking Bell.

With flavours of OG San Andreas' myriad fighting style set list, Melee Executions offers something fresh to the bounds of Grand Theft Auto 5 – which, as has been illustrated for the last 11 years, is testament to the unshakable creativity that drives, and has always driven, the hobbyist modding scene.

And it's not just wrestling moves on offer here. Kerbside Sonny Corleone-style beatdowns let you sweep enemies to the ground before stamping on them upside the head in one fluid motion. If you approach head-on, a sharp knee to the stomach lets you apply the same assault to an opponent's head, knocking them unconscious/dead before they've even hit the floor.

No-guns runs in GTA 5 are exceptionally difficult, but my latest has become impossible. Not through the lens of challenge, but through distraction and an obsession with power bombing hapless baddies for sport. That and screaming "wooooo" at the top of my lungs like an idiot.

As reported by The Cybersec Guru, Rockstar Games has suffered a security breach of indeterminate scope by the group ShinyHunters. ShinyHunters has threatened to release the data if Rockstar does not pay a ransom, while the company has confirmed the validity of the claim in a statement to Cybersec Guru and Kotaku:

“We can confirm that a limited amount of non-material company information was accessed in connection with a third-party data breach," a Rockstar spokesperson wrote. "This incident has no impact on our organization or our players.”

ShinyHunters claim to have breached Rockstar's outsourced Snowflake cloud storage system by way of a third-party analytics tool, Anodot, which reportedly suffered its own breach recently. With authentication tokens from Anodot, ShinyHunters would not have needed to crack Snowflake's security directly⁠.

They would have just been recognized as an authorized party and let in through the front door, like Agent 47 in a security guard outfit. ShinyHunters claims to have had access to Rockstar's database for a significant amount of time before it was realized anything was amiss.

"Your Snowflake instances were compromised thanks to Anodot.com. Pay or leak," ShinyHunters wrote in a post on their site. "This is a final warning to reach out by 14 Apr 2026 before we leak along with several annoying (digital) problems that'll come your way. Make the right decision, don't be the next headline."

Feeling déjà vu here? You're not alone: We learned about GTA6 in the first place from the disastrous 2022 hack of Rockstar by a 17-year-old in Oxfordshire. To be Rockstar once again on the precipice of such a catastrophe a scant four years later? I can only quote Brass Eye: "This is the one thing we didn't want to happen."

If that hack was for love of the game, ShinyHunters look to be strictly business: According to Cybersec Guru, they've targeted the likes of Microsoft, Wattpad, Cisco, AT&T, and Ticketmaster in the past few years.

If I have one takeaway from this early stage of the story, it's the oblique path the hackers allegedly took to access Rockstar's data. It's almost trite to say at this point, but it's never some super-advanced ICE breaker, elite hacker console jockey business behind these headline security breaches.

It's your third-party software-as-a-service vendor having worse security than you do, the dumbest guy at your company plugging in a USB stick he found in the parking lot, or some bush league people finder outfit in Florida losing literally everybody's Social Security number. Isn't that comforting? No matter how secure you are, someone less careful than you is probably leaving you compromised.

It's safe to say that Grand Theft Auto 6 is the single most anticipated videogame in history. But while it's hard to imagine GTA 6 achieving anything other than a monolithic sales success, HipHopGamer said in an interview with PC Gamer that he expects it's going to be making people outside of Rockstar and Take-Two very wealthy as well.

HHG, who says "there's things in Grand Theft Auto that I know for a fact, because I got a chance to party with Rockstar, literally," claims Rockstar is investing in building GTA 6 as an ecosystem and marketplace for every industry investor's favorite phrase: user-generated content.

"This game will produce millionaires. We're living in a time where UGC is a major thing," HipHopGamer said. "It's wise and it's worth the wait."

Beyond his being photographed with Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick in 2023, it's unclear just how much access to Rockstar and GTA 6's development HipHopGamer has had. Given Rockstar's 2023 acquisition of the team behind the FiveM and RedM modding platforms and its official relaunch of the platforms with a paid marketplace in 2026, however, it makes sense that Take-Two would be building a similar UGC ecosystem into its GTA 6 plans.

"When it does come, especially on PC, if you thought GTA 5 was crazy—especially with the RP servers and everything that they're doing—you ain't seen nothing yet," HipHopGamer said.

HHG also offered an additional "small exclusive," claiming to be aware of a "special side mission" featuring "a major rapper that left CM Punk bloody by accident." Based on that description, it sounds like HipHopGamer is referring to rapper Freddie Gibbs, who earlier this year said he had accidentally wounded wrestler CM Punk while the two were filming a scene for their 2025 horror film, Night Patrol.

As with all unofficial claims, it's one that should be treated as unverified. But Gibbs starring in a side mission wouldn't be without precedent: His track "Still Livin'" was featured on GTA 5's Radio Los Santos station.

While console players are a mere seven months away from seeing just how accurate HipHopGamer's predictions are when GTA 6 launches on November 6, those of us on PC still have a longer wait. We're still waiting for Rockstar to humor us with our own release date.

Launched in mid-March and set to run until April 1 (tomorrow), the latest GTA Online update is one of its most structured Community Series events to date—turning player-created content into a multi-week showcase with escalating rewards and rotating features.

Community Series jobs and weekly bonuses are nothing new in GTA Online, of course, but this iteration is being billed as the first of its kind by way of formalising the series into a clear, time-limited progression loop where each week has introduced refreshed playlists, repeatable objectives and cumulative cash incentives.

As opposed to a typical one-week bonus cycle, Rockstar's aim here has been to keep players engaged over multiple weeks while spotlighting some of the invariably cool stuff the game's community has produced for more than a decade.

And while an initial login reward of GTA$1,000,000 and triple GTA$ and RP on Community Series jobs has been nice—as has following the loop in pursuit of GTA$1,500,000 in additional payouts—I can't help but think this particular event offers a glimpse of Grand Theft Auto's future to some degree.

Back and forth

I first felt this through the lens of GTA 6 and the prospect of GTA Online 2.0, or whichever descriptor Rockstar gives the next multiplayer offshoot. Ever since the green and purple alien wars of mid-pandemic 2020—an inadvertent, player-led upstart phenomenon that swept servers worldwid—Rockstar has appeared determined to push community-facing initiatives as a means of replicating that appeal in official terms. Sprunk vs eCola is the standout to this end, but a number of group-led heist series have called for players to hit time-limited collective goals over the last few years.

With FiveM creators Cfx.re officially part of the Rockstar family as of 2023, user-generated content is likely to play a distinguished role in GTA 6 and its online counterpart, and I also remain convinced the next crime sim series outing will flirt with Fortnite-style live events in some shape or form given its stake in Circo Loco Records. Tapping into community spirit, then, is likely to be huge for Grand Theft Auto in the coming months and years.

It was only after sitting with GTA Online's latest Community Series event, however, that I started to consider its influence through the lens of GTA 5. Huge question marks hang over the future of GTA Online once GTA 6 arrives, simply because it's inevitable at least something will need to give way when Rockstar turns Leonida and Vice City into its latest chaos playground.

GTA Online in its current state makes the company so much money that, for me, an Overwatch / Overwatch 2 situation seems unlikely—where the successor essentially killed off its forerunner. Sure, a sizable chunk of players will migrate to Grand Theft Auto 6 when the time comes, taking their cash with them, but you'd have to assume that process will be gradual, so how does Rockstar maintain the appeal of a world now pushing 13 years old, 11 on PC?

I don't know the answer, but the promise of in-game cash into the millions simply for playing along definitely appeals to players. And being able to showcase pre-existing player-made content without lifting a finger, you'd have to assume, definitely appeals to Rockstar. So perhaps this is what the future looks like for GTA Online 1.0.

That or Project Americas actually does exist and will tie Los Santos and Vice City together seamlessly. One can dream.

'Community-based relay game' isn't something I'd immediately associate with Grand Theft Auto. It's just not very gangster, is it? It hardly evokes Trevor Phillips forcibly removing a hostage's teeth with pliers, nor does it reflect Niko Belic delivering harvested organs to the Black Market. When I think of the wider GTA timeline, I picture Tommy Vercetti storming Ricardo Diaz's Vice City mansion, leaving him in a bullet-strewn pool of his blood; and Carl Johnson murdering his way to the top of San Andreas' gangland underworld.

I don't immediately think of a non-real-time version of multiplayer where players take it in turns to progress a single save file, back and forth, round after round, until each game hits 100% completion. That is exactly what the GTA Chain Game is all about, therefore this community-based relay game, in actual fact, brushes up against all of the above—something it's now been doing for several years, now across several Grand Theft Auto classics.

"It’s crazy to us," says GTAKid, the Chain Game's long-serving commander-in-chief, "to think that we're still going in 2026.

"We are very aware of the increasing age of the games we play and know that while many of us regard these games as some of the greatest of all time, finding and maintaining an active player base can be difficult. We couldn’t be more appreciative that in 2026 we are continuing to welcome new players to our community."

Assisted living

When I first spoke to GTAKid about the Chain Game for PC Gamer's sister site GamesRadar+ back in 2021, the community was in the throes of 100%-ing Grand Theft Auto 3. At the time, the GTA Trilogy—Definitive Edition was just around the corner, as was the Dr Dre-starring The Contract update for GTA Online. GTA 6 was but an enduring spec on the horizon, and we were years away from the leaks, the show-stopping Tom Petty trailer, and the string of delays that have since marked the incoming crime sim series entry's long, long road.

In the meantime, mastering everything that's come before is the Chain Game's natural focus—but how important keeping things simple in the midst of this process needs to be, graduating to games with more moving parts poses its own challenges. Most recently, for example, GTAKid and co. have taken to the graffitied streets of GTA 4.

"It’s been great fun being back in Liberty City," says GTAKid. "GTA 4 has always been a favourite of mine and it has really grown in popularity with our community over the years. The beauty of playing through the more modern games is that they are feature-packed and add a lot of choice—it means that no two rounds we play are the same. Since we last spoke, we now also play through Episodes From Liberty City, and it has been great to replay those stories too.

"Looking at the bigger picture, what started as a simple save passing exercise is now an international community playing multiple games, hosting online events, and sharing conversations. Behind the scenes myself and fellow team members TubewayArmy and Stahli run a more structured operation to ensure the rounds keep running, but at the core of the Chain Game remains the same community spirit. Ultimately we couldn’t do what we do if it wasn’t for our incredible community and they remain the heart and focus of everything we plan."

My own involvement in the Chain Game has always been as an at-a-distance observer, viewing it from the outside looking in and admiring the commitment and dedication required to push games that are years, sometimes decades, old to their limits.

But what is it that keeps players coming back again and again and again—is it nostalgia, is it the challenge, is it the relay format itself?

"I think it’s a mix of all three," GTAKid adds. "Those of us a certain age have fond memories of these games from when we were younger and experiences we shared with our family and friends. What better way to spend your free time than playing a game you love? At the same time, we have welcomed more casual players and those who have barely played the games at all, giving them the opportunity to navigate the challenges of playing these games for the first time with the support and guidance of experienced community veterans.

"Where our relay format works best is that there is no commitment—you can jump in, play a mission, and see how it goes without having to worry about playing the whole game yourself. Every game brings its own energy too, from Vice to San Andreas to GTA 4, it’s been really interesting to me seeing how our rounds for the modern games differ from the classics.

"When you think of a game like Vice City, you think of a simple, more arcade-like experience; I’ve been able to fit in a quick turn before leaving for work or during a lunch break. A game like GTA 4 can require a bit more time and concentration but then can be a perfect choice for a chill weekend where you want to sit back, relax, and take a longer turn. Each game brings something different but that’s part of the fun."

Of course, with GTA 6 now set to finally land on consoles later this year, GTAKid and his Chain Game community wait with baited breath. It surely goes without saying that the next Grand Theft Auto marks an opportunity to extend not just the Chain Game itself into new-age Vice City, but the reach of the community itself.

How that might unfold remains to be seen, but GTAKid reckons he and his peers will enjoy the game on a more casual basis first before then mapping out what a GTA 6 Chain Game may look like in size and scope.

He adds: "The team and I are really excited about GTA 6 and there may have already been a conversation or two about what a Chain Game might look like. This time around we definitely hope to put something together sooner rather than later, so I’m sure once we’ve had the chance to play through and complete the game ourselves, we’ll be coming together to discuss how we make that happen.

"We have always really focused on keeping the format of the Chain Game as simple as possible so that it is adaptable to any game. While games have undoubtedly become more complex, all we need to make it happen is a way of getting a save file from person to person. As simple as that may sound, we have encountered challenges with updates changing save file formats and creating incompatibility between versions.

"We thankfully have so far always been able to come up with a solution and I have to give credit to Samutz and his site for providing us and the wider GTA community with a way of being able to easily convert save files between update versions on PC."

Which I guess is what does, what has and what always will anchor the Chain Game for as long as it continues to exist: teamwork. It's now a genuinely international operation with hundreds of players feeding into it with varying degrees of commitment. Faces come and go, sure, some for longer than others, but for GTAKid on a personal level, the Chain Game has forged a throughline into the last decade or so of his life.

With that, comes an unbridled sense of gratitude and understanding—for the GTA Chain Game itself, and for other hobbyist communities in the Grand Theft Auto space and beyond.

"Now more than ever, I have a deep appreciation for communities like ours," says GTAKid. "Through the games I spent so many of my younger years playing, I have been able to create countless new memories and more importantly lifelong friends.

"I often think about how the Chain Game has been the one constant in more than a decade of my life and how it and the people who are a part of it have supported me through both good and difficult times. I couldn’t be more thankful to be a part of something so special.

"We’re in a really good place at the moment and our plan for the next five years is to keep growing and making the Chain Game better than ever. It’s set to be an exciting year for us, celebrating 100 rounds of Vice City, introducing a new type of special round, and perhaps something new over on the west coast."

Everything you need to know about the GTA Chain Game, including how to get involved, lives on the Chain Game Lounge on GTAForums.

We're starting to zero in on the release of Grand Theft Auto 6. We've been given the run-around over the last year or so with reschedules and delays, but now we've got the November 19 release date—for consoles, we're still waiting for word on a PC version—and Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has assured fans that this is going to be the real one, for sure.

Now we know when GTA 6 will be in the hands of us mere mortals, Zelnick says the real question is how many of us do you think can score a sick day, and how many records will the game break.

Because Zelnick is so sure of GTA 6's impending success that he literally cannot fathom a world in which a gamer who can play it chooses not to. "If you have a console and you're over 17, just explain to me how it is that you've decided, 'No, no GTA 6, [I'm] not interested?'" Zelnick says in an interview with The Game Business (via GameSpot).

I'm not a betting man but I'd certainly say GTA 6 getting a shed load of players on release isn't a stretch by any means. However, I'm not so sure I'd extend it so far as to say every eligible gamer will, without a doubt, be playing GTA 6.

Some gamers just aren't interested in the world that GTA offers. You've got your hardcore political sim lovers, cosy gamers, and people who exclusively play The Sims. But even with that in mind Zelnick is unwavering in his assertation.

"It's not happening," Zelnick continues. "We stay engaged with the kind of entertainment we fell in love with at 17. Think about it, if I say to you, 'What kind of music do you like?' Like everyone else, you'll say, 'Oh, I listen to everything.' That just isn't true, incidentally. But if I say, 'Okay, you're by yourself, you have an hour, and all you're going to do in this hour is listen to music,' and [I say] that I want you to have the best possible time and the most relaxing time, you will listen to the music you listened to at the age of 17.

"If you fell in love with videogames at 17 and you're 40, guess what you still do? Play videogames. That is why the [gaming] cohort is continuing to grow as we age. I know [gaming investment advisor] Matthew Ball doesn't believe that, but our experience here at Take-Two is that we are benefitting from industry tailwinds."

Ok, sure. There'll be plenty of older gamers excited to play GTA 6 and rekindle their nostalgic love for games, but what about the young'uns? You know, those degenerate youths who weren't even alive for the release of most of the GTA games. Well, Zelnick isn't worried about that either.

"I think we're gonna have a lot of 17-year-olds playing GTA 6," Zelnick says. "I don't think there's any risk of [them] being like, 'Oh, I didn't play [GTA] 5, or 4, or 3, or 2, or 1, I'm not showing up [for 6].' To the contrary, I think we'll be able to engage every appropriate individual in GTA 6." So there you have it folks: In Zelnick's ideal world, every gamer will, undoubtedly, be playing GTA 6. I think it's going to be mandatory at this point.

I've spent a few thousand hours of my life living in GTA Online. Well, actually, that's how long Steam tells me I've spent tearing up the streets of Los Santos and Blaine County. This lurching figure does not include my time living myriad Truman Show parallel existences within the bounds of FiveM's roleplaying scene.

In any event, at this stage I'm pretty au fait with both the official Grand Theft Auto 5 multiplayer offshoot playground and its unofficial player-made one. I enjoy both spaces for very different reasons, and as GTA 6 comes into increasingly sharper focus, I've spent a lot of time thinking about what I want from its next online variation—whatever shape it may take.

Given the enduring and seemingly interminable success of GTA Online, it's hard to imagine Rockstar ditching its golden goose entirely when it moves house to Vice City later this year on console. One would presume GTA Online in its current state will continue, business as usual for a period of time, with GTA 6's slant on a multiplayer offering running alongside it, at least in the beginning.

Rockstar's acquisition of Cfx.re in 2023—the team behind FiveM—suggests the next crime sim entry will push deeper into the RP space in an official capacity, and it's exactly this distinction that I want in the coming months and years in the Florida-aping state of Leonida.

Believe it or not, it was while watching some punk named YEPYEP2006 smash up my truck Rusty, beaten down and teary-eyed, that led me to this dawning realisation.

Cog in the machine

GTA Online is a machine. With a half-century of complimentary updates spanning more than a decade, it boasts an exhaustive array of customisable weapons and vehicles, standing as one of the most alluring shop window experiences in the history of videogames—its most appetising material goods literally zip past you, on the street or in the skies, and whether you grind or vouch for real-money Shark Cards, everything you see can be yours.

Moreover, 2019's Diamond Casino update let us live out our best Ocean's Eleven-inspired fantasies. In 2020, the Cayo Perico update gave us a desert island to explore at a time when freely roaming beyond our doorsteps in the height of strict quarantine measures was impossible. And in 2021, The Contract brought Dr Dre out of retirement to not only star in a string of dedicated missions, but also drop new and exclusive music on the Los Santos airwaves. GTA Online, now almost 13 years-deep (11 on PC), is a dynasty.

The roleplay scene is a less obnoxious beast. It's a breeding ground for imagination, for storytelling, for daft capers and spending loads of valuable real-world time in-game collecting garbage in order to buy a banged up truck that winds up getting wrecked in a bout of high-stakes hide-and-seek. And, while the latter example is a very specific one, it's also exactly what I want when I need a break from the balls-out the bathwater fare of vanilla GTA Online.

In 2026, the GTA Online economy exists to fuel an endless streak of hedonism, nefarious activity and chaos, whereas the majority of life sim-styled RP spaces reflect reality—where saving up for one single banged up truck can take literal months of investment, and reckless behaviour has genuine in-game ramifications. Having failed to pay for car insurance, you see, my truck has remained in bits in the yard of a building site in downtown LS for weeks.

When GTA Online 2.0 comes around, then, I'm hoping for two variations—one akin to GTA Online right now, where money is plentiful and excess rules all; and another more in-line with the roleplay scene, where money is tight and earned through toil and toll. Even from the outside looking in at this moment in time, it seems Rockstar has the unhinged side of the next Grand Theft Auto nailed down, something best referenced in that first Tom Petty-soundtracked trailer at the tail end of 2023. Its deference to the social media world that encompasses pretty much everything we do in the modern age was uncanny, yet I'd love to see this super-realistic slant on new-gen Vice City given the same super-realistic rules the current GTA RP spectrum has down to a T.

All of which could probably be chalked off as wishful thinking were it not for Rockstar's aforementioned Cfx.re acquisition. To my mind, this is one of the most elusive and intriguing facets of where GTA Online goes next, and it's something that could stand number six's PC iteration apart. Give me both, please, and I'll almost certainly hang around for another several thousand hours.

My newest obsession in GTA 5 roleplay is playing hide-and-seek with other players, and allowing the winner to smash up the other's vehicle because, well, having nice things in this game has never really been the done thing.

And so I find myself gunning it down the Los Santos freeway in my banged up Beater tow truck with a knot in my stomach. It took me six freaking months of mind-numbing garbage collection to afford the wheels I've since affectionately named Rusty. Having fallen deep into the new craze I've found sweeping pockets of the Grand Theft Auto RP scene of late, what, I'm supposed to just let some rando smash up my prized possession simply because I'm rubbish at hide-and-seek?

The answer to this question is, quite simply, yes. And so following my crisis of conscience, I pull over to the side of the road and hang a U-turn.

I'm now heading back to the scene—the construction site in Pillbox Hill, Downtown Los Santos—to face my fate. I lost fair and square… not that this makes watching 'YEPYEP2006' smashing up my ride, Street Fighter 2 bonus stage style, any easier to bear. You dirty bastard.

It's a sore one, for me and my in-game bank balance, given that my truck was not insured.

Unlike vanilla GTA Online, fixing your car in Grand Theft Auto roleplay is not a simple case of calling up Mors Mutual, hitting a few buttons and treating yourself to a mobile pay-and-spray. In most RP servers, it's instead a process of ringing another real-life player and having them pick up your vehicle, tow it to a garage, charge you an absolute fortune for repairs and then send you on your merry way.

With a grand total of $1,250 in my current account – a week's worth of garbage collection wages and a shade shy of the $9,000 required to get ol' Rusty back on the tarmac – betting my car in a high-stakes game of hide-and-seek suddenly seems ill-advised. Which is, of course, a huge part of the buzz tied to my latest roleplay obsession.

You see, I won the last three games. After a gruelling 15-minute session inside Michael De Santa's villa, I out-foxed one player by climbing onto the GTA 5 Story Mode protagonist's red-slate roof before lying prone behind a chimney stack. On another outing, an Elyssian Island nightclub proved a formidable fortress. Here, on the third floor of the perpetually unfinished Mile High Club skyscraper complex, a palette of black plastic four-inch waste piping was not adequate, truck-saving cover—a sentence that, after 11 years of GTA Online on PC, I did not expect to write.

What never fails to impress me, though, are the sublime and ridiculous ways inventive players have somehow managed to keep things fresh in GTA 5 and GTA Online. For the last several years, I've revelled in everything the game's offshoot player-made roleplay scene has thrown at me, and yet something as simple of hide-and-seek in a world I know so well has sunk its hooks deep into me.

There's a nostalgic value tied to it all—from prop hunt in Garry's Mod to actual hide-and-seek in my real-life primary school days 30-odd years ago. And, of course, poor old Rusty. Goodnight sweet prince and back to the waste management facility I go. And if you find yourself playing hide-and-seek in a GTA roleplay server soon, make sure you've splashed for car insurance ahead of time.

When Squid Game first exploded onto Netflix in late 2021, its influence on other forms of popular culture was immediate. The GTA 5 modding scene was captured by the zeitgeist, but it must be said that Los Santos and Blaine County's slant on the dystopian murder game show left a lot to be desired.

Defined by janky scripts, boring assets and dodgy AI, even the best-looking standalone variations lacked depth and purpose. The projects that pervaded the GTA roleplaying space arrived with some decent ideas at the time—and, crucially, swathes of keen contestants—but ultimately lacked the execution needed to keep folk returning.

I wasn't exactly looking to check-in on the Squid Game GTA mods space, then (I am, admittedly, still to get round to watching seasons two and three of the show itself), however I am happy to report it's in really good shape today.

Over the course of the last six months, in fact, it appears a whole host of neat fan-made projects have followed the conclusion of the show's third outing last summer. As you might expect, the iconic Red Light-Green Light gauntlet has received the most attention—but this time with scripts that actually work, configurable timers, smart detection logic, properly defined elimination rules, and in thematic terms, NPC behaviour that meets the show's darker themes and GTA's zany tone somewhere in the middle.

From the spaces I've sampled over the last few weeks, both standalone and those baked into FiveM RP, some mods drop you into fenced-off murder boxes, while others adopt custom maps with spectator cameras and scripted announcers. As you might expect, players now want more, with player progression, custom challenges and dedicated tournaments just some of the requests filling comment sections on the likes of GTA 5-Mods.

All of which reflects the very best of GTA modding: starting out small, a wee bit daft, somewhat broken—and then evolving into something more sustainable and worth returning for.

As if Los Santos and Blaine County weren't already hostile enough, the latest survival mod to grace the murderous bounds of GTA 5 turns the actual map against us by way of an irradiated hellscape.

Aptly named The Exclusion Zone, modder VelyXCore has rolled out a series of high-risk radioactive hotspots across the San Andreas playground with what the creator describes as a "slow-burn mechanic where the environment itself becomes your deadliest enemy".

They ain't lying, I can confirm, as The Exclusion Zone delivers exactly on what it promises—all the while letting you know this in no uncertain terms. Spending too long in the mod's most irradiated locations inflicts accumulative radiation poisoning—in the same style as the Fallout series—with an organ failure mechanic that, expectedly, stops you pretty dead in your tracks.

Through this, The Exclusion Zone doesn't force instant health drain tactics on you, but instead lets you grow progressively unwell the closer you get to the source. A tweaked "clean and modern" UI details your current exposure levels, meaning that when the words "Critical: Organ failure imminent!" flash across the top of your screen, exclamation mark and all, you know you're up shit creek without a paddle.

In order to survive the mod's handful of affected areas—at the time of writing, these include: Humane Labs (epicenter, critical threat), Fort Zancudo Delta (high threat), Sandy Shores Airfield (medium threat), and LS Airport and Port perimeters (industrial zones)—you'll want to seek out gas masks to prevent radiation poisoning from rising. But, as you might expect, these are hardly found growing on trees.

From here, creator VelyXCore has plans to grow the project, while one comment on the project's GTA5-Mods page suggests doubling up with existing Pripyat add-on maps, otherwise known as the home of the Stalker series. VelyXCore says they plan to add a config file so players can place this mod's radiation zones precisely over the Pripyat map markers. Which makes me want to breathe furiously into a paper bag lest I hyperventilate. But I'm not sure that'll stem the radiation poisoning.

Around a month ago Rockstar launched an official mod shop for Grand Theft Auto Online, with Cfx Marketplace coming three years after the studio's 2023 acquisition of Cfx.re, a GTA and Red Dead Redemption modding team. This is obviously something of a dry run for the company before the all-conquering arrival of GTA 6, with a new GTA Online presumably not far behind: Rockstar has seen that Roblox money, and would sure like some of it.

Now, and perhaps inevitably, comes the news that the GTA 5 multiplayer platform alt:V Multiplayer is going to be closing down this summer after nine years, apparently after Rockstar owner Take-Two started making threatening noises in its direction. The alt:V team describe their work as "a free modification for Grand Theft Auto 5 that lets you play on dedicated servers with custom gamemodes." In other words roleplay servers, and yes that's pretty similar to what FiveM offers.

"This is not an easy message to write," writes alt:V team member Vadzz on Discord (thanks, GamesRadar+). "For the past nine years, we've been building alt:V—starting as a small side project and growing into a full-scale multiplayer platform used by hundreds of servers and thousands of players around the world. It's been years of solving hard problems and trying new ideas."

But it seems like the alt:V team got an offer they couldn't refuse. "Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive have made it clear that FiveM is the only authorized platform for GTAV multiplayer modding, as defined in their Platform License Agreement (PLA)," continues Vadzz. "In accordance with that policy, and at Take-Two's request, alt:V will begin a structured shutdown process in 2026."

No new community servers will be accepted from March 2, and public access to the toolkit will be discontinued. The alt:V team recommend all server owners using it begin "planning their migration to FiveM as early as possible."

Come May 4, the public server listing will disappear, and by July 6, "all remaining community servers are expected to cease operations." All servers must have migrated by that point, because the "backend infrastructure will be permanently shut down."

The PLA referenced in the shutdown message was updated last month alongside the official launch of Cfx.re, so this seems related, though in all honesty the site will have been on Rockstar's radar for years. Rockstar and Take Two are traditionally hostile to modders, and indeed before it bought FiveM accused them of hosting code to "facilitate piracy", and banned three of the main creators from Rockstar games.

Rockstar's policy changed in 2022 as someone over there woke up to how potentially profitable the whole GTA modding and roleplay scene is. For a while it allowed non-commercial roleplay servers, as long as they didn't interfere with official services, but it looks like those days may be behind us.

Unfortunately them's the risks when you mod the biggest game on the planet. The next GTA Online will make more money than Croesus, and Take-Two wants as much of it as possible. Which is fine, but it absolutely sucks that the company feels the need to shut down what is a relatively niche community: as I look at alt:V now, there are just under 750 people playing on various servers. Alt:V doesn't exactly feel like something that was ever going to stop Strauss Zelnick from buying another ivory backscratcher, but RIP anyway.

How excited are you for Grand Theft Auto 6? Pretty excited? Oh yeah, well, prove it—move to Norway and have a child. What, you don't want to? I knew you were chicken. I knew you didn't have what it takes.

In case you're wondering whether I have gone fully mad, the answer is 'only slightly'. This is an actual deal that retailer Komplett, a Scandinavian gaming and PC store, is offering on its Instagram (thanks, Metro).

The video's text roughly translates to: "Life hack: Lie together today, get GTA 6 free from us in 9 months". In case you thought it was a bit, the description clarifies: "This is actually not [a joke], GTA 6 is released in 9 months, and if you have a baby on the launch date, we'll give you the game for free."

So, let's do the maths. The average pregnancy lasts for nine months. Assuming you want to obtain the best chances of getting a free GTA 6 copy from Komplett, that means you'll want to conceive your future child (who will presumably need therapy once you explain the circumstances of their birth to them) on February 19.

That gives you six days. Six days to meet someone, agree to have a child with them, move to Norway if you don't live there already (statistically-speaking you don't, the country has a population that's equal to half an Oblivion Remastered player base), and then cross your fingers really hard for nine months after one wild night of savings-induced lovemaking.

Or, y'know. Take care of the bearer of your child—or yourself, depending on what equipment you've got.

I will, however, say that while Komplett's promise is seemingly entirely earnest, you should not under any circumstances have a child for the sole purposes of getting a free copy of GTA 6. There's the ethical concerns, true, but it's also just a really bad deal, even in Norway, which has robust social services, including a "barnehage" system that provides a subsidised and affordable kindergarten.

I couldn't find the exact costs for Norway, but here in the UK, the estimated cost of raising a child to the ripe old age of 18 is estimated to be around £250,000 - £300,000. We don't know how much GTA 6 costs yet, but assuming the rumours of an $80 (approximately £58) price tag are true, that means having a child to get a free copy of GTA 6 is around 5,172 times more expensive than just buying the damn thing.

Also, like. The chances are you're not exactly going to land on the day. Please don't attempt this—but if by any chance you happen to be Norwegian AND the proud owner of a newborn child, I am sure your significant other won't mind a quick trip away from the fragile, precious life you've brought into the world to pop to Komplett and cash in your good fortune.

Completing the best VIP work in GTA Online is a great way to earn money, especially when there's a 4x cash and RP bonus added to the mix. Though not the most lucrative activity you can undertake in the game to make money, it's definitely worthwhile and relatively no fuss. Since the options I recommend here don't require other players, you can do them whenever you want.

Below I'll explain how to get started with VIP work in GTA Online, but also the best VIP work you can undertake to easily earn some cheddar.

How to start VIP work in GTA Online

To start doing VIP work in GTA Online, you'll first have to purchase an office, which you can do via the Dynasty 8 website on your phone and then Dynasty 8 Executive—the Maze Bank West property is free so just buy that, head on over, and interact with your CEO terminal. Once you have the building, you can also:

1. Press M on keyboard to bring up the interaction menu
2. Choose "Register as a Boss" and then "SecuroServ CEO"
3. Set looking for work to "on" and then "Start an Organisation"

If the server you're on already has the max number of CEOs, then simply open the menu, cycle to the online tab, and select "Find new session". When you're registered as a CEO, to start VIP work, all you need to do is open the interaction menu again, select "SecuroServ CEO", and then "VIP work", which will give you a list of jobs you can do.

GTA Online best VIP work

While stockpiling cargo and completing deliveries can be really lucrative, it requires a bit of set up versus VIP work that you can jump straight into. For my money, the best VIP work missions are:

• Headhunter: This is a simple assassination job in which you need to take out four targets, and you can complete it super quickly if you've got a helicopter with weapons to zip around in. Quick and easy cash, plus it doesn't require other players. I recommend activating the mission in Los Santos itself, because targets are quite spread out in the north if you do it there.
• Sightseer: In this mission, you have to collect three packages around the map which are each revealed after you complete a little hacking minigame in the Sightseer app—these are very easy once you get used to them. Again, this is super quick to do if you have a helicopter to zoom about to each location. Don't forget that you can get the Frogger for free from the Elitas Travel website if you're just starting out

Since VIP work missions have a 10 minute cooldown for each specific mission, but only five minutes otherwise, I'd recommend hopping back and forth between these to make the most money. Remember, if you earn $100k this week as an Associate or Bodyguard, you'll get a $100k bonus on top of that, plus the Valentines Blazer.

In the most welcome of news, you can now play the original Grand Theft Auto—the 1997 top-down, chaos-in-a-shoebox crime simulator that started it all—on modern PCs and Steam Decks without cursing at your screen and tearing your hair out. As a long-suffering bald man, I'm not sure I can confidently pin my lack of follicle fullness on being unable to reliably run the OG GTA on modern hardware until now, but it has always been a total faff.

Removed from digital storefronts such as Steam by Rockstar in the earliest stretch of last decade, middling mods and haphazard emulation have hardly managed to bridge the gap in the interim. Enter LukeStorm, who has packaged the game into something he calls GTA Ready2Play, a plug-and-play mini-time-capsule that runs like it somehow belongs in 2026.

Back to the future

For LukeStorm, this wasn't a crusade so much as a hobby spiralling into digital preservation. "It's truly a passion project for me to prepare older games in my own Ready2Play style," he says. "My Ready2Play bundles everything to play easily without tinkering and classic installation on modern Windows systems. The individually crafted portable launcher ensures that the game is ready to play at any time."

What's fascinating is how unambitious the project's beginnings were. LukeStorm didn't set out to revive a community, engineer a definitive version, or solve compatibility issues for thousands of nostalgic players. "I wanted to have GTA (Windows version) with the best possible compatibility and without classic installation in my Ready2Play style—that was my only idea," he says. "For a long time, it wasn't clear whether I would release Ready2Play in this form at all."

Yet here it is. And if the stream of positive replies and comments on the mod's GTAForums' thread are anything to go by, calling it celebrated among those playing likely doesn't do it justice.

To this end, LukeStorm adds: "The feedback [has been] overwhelmingly positive. Some updates, such as fixes for audio crashes or missing menu sounds, were made directly as a result of this feedback." Even more surprising to him was the number of players running it on Steam Deck and Linux. LukeStorm hasn't tested it there himself, granted, but he's still marvelling at the reports weeks and months down the line. "It was exciting to see and I was surprised how many people tried it on Steam Deck or Linux."

Of course, converting an old game into something frictionless is never smooth. "An unexpected problem was that there was no sound in the game menu when you started the game without the intro," LukeStorm says. Then came the widescreen patch, then the DirectDraw wrapper required a full update to even remotely behave on modern systems. Thankfully, fellow modder FunkyFr3sh stepped in, updating the wrapper and helping patch issues.

As a whole, one thing Ready2Play does especially well is balance—it preserves the original game faithfully while injecting compatibility fixes where they matter. LukeStorm stresses a desire to keep the essence of the original Grand Theft Auto intact while including all relevant content from the game and its expansions, with anything that could meaningfully alter the game's behaviour tucked safely behind launcher toggles.

GTA on the go

That philosophy also shaped the Ready2Play identity: zero friction, zero fuss, maximum portability. "That's exactly the goal," LukeStorm agrees. "Portable and ready to play anytime without tinkering and classic installation. I don't like fixed installations at all… not to mention when you have to install additional stuff. Of course the kind of Ready2Play I have in mind involves a lot of effort… but I do that with fun and passion."

And you can feel that passion. The package includes everything you expect: the base game, both expansions, language options, widescreen support, audio fixes, menu-sound restoration, updated DirectDraw handling, and a bespoke portable launcher that looks like something Rockstar might have made today assuming the game hadn't been all but resigned to the history books.

LukeStorm adds: "The most rewarding part was definitely the feedback from people expressing how much joy it brought them to play the very first GTA again or even to discover it for the first time. I was also surprised by how many people actually found and tried the GTA Ready2Play edition."

As for the future, Ready2Play has reached the destination he envisioned. "Updates will only be released if there is added value in terms of compatibility, stability or a new feature," he says. In other words: it's finished. Or at least as finished as a Windows-era resurrection project can ever be.

The Grand Theft Auto classics are, of course, no stranger to less-than-finessed remaster ventures, which only makes fan-made projects like Ready2Play all the more impressive. In this instance, success isn't defined by reworked character models or smoother animations, Ready2Play is a success because, against the myriad projects that have tried and failed to do so, this one works reliably.

Still some ways away from the arrival of GTA 6, I truly wish 11-year-old me could see me now tearing up Liberty, Vice and San Andreas as they first appeared before the turn of the millennium all over again. Back when I had hair.

After a couple of delays you might have heard about, Grand Theft Auto 6 is still scheduled for a November 19 release date on consoles, which will be music to the ears of anyone with a few million bucks in Take-Two stock (that's most of you, I assume). Still, maybe you're a bit yippy, and need extra reassurance—even after a T2 press blast a few days ago—that Rockstar really means it, this time.

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick hears your cries. In a recent chat with CNBC's Jim Cramer, Zelnick pointed out that, look, the company must be confident in the November 19 date, because it's spent all this goshdang money on marketing the game in the lead-up time.

"We have marketing beats coming this summer, and we don't spend money on marketing until we're pretty close to release," said Zelnick. To be clear, he means more than just putting out a slick trailer in the tail-end of 2023. Think ads on buses, billboards, a never-ending feast of GTA 6 imagery jammed in your eyes and ears for months on end. It'll be fun!

Asked if Take-Two really needs to bother marketing a game that's already bigger than god, Zelnick demurs that "I think there's a difference between awareness and energy, and we need to create the energy.

"The anticipation is huge, it's bigger than ever before, but in our business, you do have to tell people what's coming… our consumers want to know that this is going to be great and they want to see what the visuals look like." I think we kind of already know what the visuals look like, but I'll cut Zelnick some slack: he's explaining things for a CNBC audience who probably aren't too au fait with games.

He does get a little philosophical with it, mind you. Zelnick says Take-Two isn't just out there doing marketing in order to get you hype to drop an unknown amount of dollars on GTA 6, it wants "the product to be authentically owned by our consumers."

Which, yeah, I think is just a highfalutin way of saying they want you hype to drop an unknown amount of dollars on GTA 6, sure. "The marketing has to be delicate. It has to feel like this is real. We're not selling hamburgers. We're selling this unique art form." And they're selling it on November 19. Don't let anybody tell you different (unless it's Strauss Zelnick).

How does that song by the Welsh rock back Stereophonics go, again? It only takes one tree to make a thousand matches; it only takes one match to burn a thousand trees. Lest I murder this shoehorned comparison any more than necessary, it seems as though Pluma_1980's bid to drag GTA 5 into the modern era requires just one hobbyist modder and 20,000 trees.

Named GTA5 V4EVER, Pluma's project strives to "update the atmosphere of the entire map" by stuffing Los Santos with more environmental detail than any game from 2013 probably deserves. Far from a simple reshade or texture swap, this pretty massive undertaking adds 20,000 new world objects—from trees to plants, shrubs, fences, poles, signs, street clutter, roadside scenery and more.

Moreover, outdated props such as phone booths have been whipped out entirely; while neighbourhoods have been given a fresh lick of paint or a new coat of grime depending on their economic standing—with Pluma's end game being to craft a world that feels "alive and renewed, without losing the original spirit."

The outcome is indeed a re-densified Los Santos and Blaine County, whose main thoroughfares feel refreshed and its peripheries reinvigorated. Pluma_1980 adds: "My goal is just to refresh the world — to make every part of the map feel alive again, like a game built for today."

Check out some pictures of GTA5 V4EVER here:

Grand Theft Auto has always thrived on an outsider’s perspective. There’s something sardonically Scottish about its trademark tone—the relentless skewering of American excess and absurdity, paired with a loving recreation of the country’s most iconic cities. You can feel the awe of a tourist in the way your field-of-view shifts as you stare up at the skyscrapers of Liberty City—a technical trick that induces a kind of grounded vertigo.

Yet Rockstar had never so explicitly embraced the outsider before GTA 4. Niko Bellic is quite literally fresh off the boat, propelled by his cousin’s fanciful promises of riches, as well as the horror of the Balkan wars behind him. "I had been living in New York for a few years," Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser told the Lex Fridman podcast two months ago. "I was single and miserable, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to stay in America." This mood bled into GTA 4—reinforced by the aura of uncertainty and instability that the Hot Coffee controversy had brought to Rockstar’s door during the San Andreas years.

As a result, GTA 4 is often dour and grey—coloured the way Niko sees it, as a newcomer utterly unconvinced by the American dream. But the oppression induces its own kind of awe. Step out of your first safehouse in Hove Beach and you’ll find yourself directly under the railway, which blankets the street in shadow and the rattling roars of passing trains. Take a right and you’ll spot the ferris wheel of Firefly Island, its coloured lights only casting the surrounding sky into even deeper darkness.

This juxtaposition, of dazzling whites and abyssal blacks, appears to come straight from the ‘70s night movies of Walter Hill—The Driver and The Warriors, the latter of which Rockstar loved so much it released an adaptation for the PS2. The Warriors opens just as GTA 4 does, with the ferris wheel and the subway train, and the people too dangerous to be in bed.

Walter Hill, in turn, was inspired by the paintings of Edward Hopper. You’ll know Hopper’s most famous work, Nighthawks: the moody portrait of patrons in a New York diner, alone but together, lit up behind glass like fish in an aquarium. The painting finds a sad beauty in urban loneliness, a thread Rockstar picks up more than 60 years later.

The loneliness of being Niko Bellic is balanced by something approaching a social life—the hesitant connection of strangers in the city. That’s represented by GTA 4’s hangout and minigame mechanics, which add up to a gentle form of life simulation. Rockstar had been experimenting with similar systems in 2006’s Bully, which found missions jostling for attention with a full schedule of school classes. And even before that, GTA: San Andreas had introduced a host of non-criminal activities—tattoo parlours, burger bars, dating and the gym.

Where San Andreas encouraged a kind of insular stat management, however—tracking your fat loss like a Fitbit—GTA 4 is more concerned with the fuzzier business of conversation. During downtime, you see Niko reflected through the eyes of his acquaintances and lovers. He is ice cold (complimentary), nice (complimentary), or dressed like a schlub (derogatory). Much of the sense that GTA 4 is a game of choice and consequence comes from the fact that his outfits are scrutinised by his dates—down to the decision to stop wearing a particular pair of glasses.

Some of the chats are throwaway, but others are funny or poignant, revealing buried truths about the backgrounds of the Bellics. The terrible realities that have caused cousin Roman to retreat into fantasies of mansions and fast money. Players at the time felt that constant phone calls from Niko’s friends undermined the flow of their crime story—to the point that ‘Hey cousin, let’s go bowling!’ became an early meme. But I wonder now, in the wake of Persona’s domination of the West, whether these life simulation elements would be assessed differently.

Certainly, they give you another layer to think about while skidding around Liberty City. Just as the drug deals of Chinatown Wars give you reasons to make meaningful detours between districts, GTA 4’s hangouts encourage geographical opportunism. If a main mission takes you to northern Algonquin, maybe you’ll look up Dwayne, your downbeat counterpart in the projects. Spend enough time in his company and he’ll be ready to send backup goons during your most overwhelming firefights. A hilariously overpowered ability comes courtesy of Kiki, the downtown lawyer so convinced that Niko is unfairly targeted by the cops that she’ll happily call the District Attorney to clear his Wanted level, no questions asked.

There are undoubtedly key moments, especially later in the story, when GTA 4’s side activities and crime saga collide. Before its ending, you’re snapped back onto the tracks—any serious dating you’ve done dismissed as frivolous, in favour of the relationships that Rockstar has decided are the important ones.

Yet there are also flashes of brilliance, when GTA 4 relies on the unseriousness of minigame activities to slip shocks under the radar. The first dating partner thrust your way is Michelle, a friendly and slightly neurotic figure who keeps all the tags on her furniture. By the time you’ve taken her to enough fast food joints and pool bars, you’ve stopped associating her with the main story. Until, that is, she reveals herself to be an undercover agent, and passes you over to her handler.

The tragic irony is that Michelle is the only character Niko has bothered to lie to—concealing his day job as a hitman to the highest bidder. And all along, she’s known exactly who he is. At every juncture, GTA 4 reinforces the idea that there’s no escape from yourself. Not even on a new continent.

Perhaps more notorious than GTA 4’s minigames is its driving physics: astonishingly detailed, unforgiving, and liable to send an unprepared newcomer flying through the windscreen. But it’s also fitting. GTA 4 is a game about a man trying to turn a corner. Who discovers that the momentum of his past mistakes is too great, and instead of steering the car around the bend, finds himself hurtling towards a wall.