It's kind of strange that the state monopoly on violence is the only gang you can start an even slightly lasting beef with in Grand Theft Auto 5. Real-life gangs aren't known for their live-and-let-live attitude, and yet if you stroll around town shooting Ballas and Cartel members, they will adopt a stance of Christ-like forgiveness the second you're out of eyesight. The cops at least will spend a little time hunting you before they give up.

This is what I aimed to fix when I installed Gang Notoriety into my tottering Jenga tower of GTA 5 mods. The pitch is simple: gangs will get sustainably angry with you now, accruing wanted stars much like the cops do until you manage to lose the heat.

To test this new facet of GTA 5's rich simulation, I teleported (I can teleport now) to Grove Street and began shooting.

It sort of worked? The minimap blossomed with a thousand red and orange rings—each denoting a gang member who was very cross with me and ready to do something about it. I got a wanted star, too. Whether that was the gang's wanted star or just regular cops being upset about me shooting people in the street? Hard to say.

But things quickly got weird. Before too long, the assembled Ballas of Grove Street started to lose interest in me and started to gain interest in… each other? They ducked behind cover and started attacking each other, and at some point one loosed a rottweiler, which just seemed rather confused by the entire situation. Meanwhile, the frictionless vehicles of Los Santos continued to wheel all about us, including in the sky.

Though my minimap was still red, everyone had lost interest in me. The Ballas seemed to have become notorious among the Ballas. They all eventually took care of themselves, save the sole survivor, who had quite the wanted level himself, thanks to a previous mod.

I will get back to you when I figure out the moral of this story.

The news cycle this past week has been dominated with Grand Theft Auto 6 leaks, and for good reason, Rockstar studios has sprung a big one, with the self-ordained "Cyberleek" drumming up attention with waves of public manifestos, statements, and a little crypto farming on the side.

In preparation for its somewhat-confusing Netflix-exclusive gameplay reveal tomorrow, Rockstar's finally acknowledged the leaks. Both confirming that they're real beyond a shadow of a doubt (not that there was much doubt to begin with), and trying to salvage some hype.

"We know that many of you have been waiting to hear from us regarding the events of the past week," reads a post to Rockstar's Instagram. "It would be an understatement to say that having videos of Grand Theft Auto 6 gameplay leak in this way has been heartbreaking for our team, and this is obviously not how we intended for you to see the game after all this time.

"We are very sorry that everything has taken as long as it has—from getting the game finished (nearly there!) to sharing more details and official gameplay, and providing the community with everything you want to know."

I'm not sure Rockstar needs to apologise for a videogame taking a long time to make, especially when 13 years have already passed since the last, but I'm a little old-fashioned in that I don't think players are owed much of anything beyond fair consumer practices and, like, maybe getting to actually own the things they buy. It is, however, intriguing that the studio's apologising for that given the whole Netflix thing which, speaking cynically, is essentially a six-hour early access gated behind a streaming service subscription.

I do feel bad for the developers, though—especially given that even those who were unceremoniously fired (in such a dramatic fashion that the then-UK Prime Minister commented on it) still want people to see the fruits of their labour. Take-Two's bottom line has likely barely been dented by the leaks, but if I were a person working on a videogame for years, I'd be pretty exhausted by someone making a circus out of it.

"We are very excited for everyone to see the extended look tomorrow. It has taken longer than we wanted to get it ready, but as with everything we do, we know we need to exceed your expectations, and we are determined to deliver at the level you expect and deserve. While it is unfortunate that the intended game experience may now be impacted by some spoilers, we hope that everyone will wait a bit longer to experience the game for themselves on November 19."

Rockstar ends the letter with a show of thanks: "We want to thank everyone in the community who has reached out with messages of support this past week—your words have meant more to this team than you can imagine. Ultimately, we are making this game for you, and without you, we would not have the privilege of making games."

If you remember, uh, yesterday, then you'll remember how I have recently modded GTA 5 to essentially deactivate friction on all NPC cars. Also, all NPC cars are perpetually, unstoppably in motion. Long story short: they keep accidentally flying and/or exploding.

So I thought what I could do today would be to try to become a professional driver in that world.

I have installed The Getaway (Driver Missions), a mod which lets you dial a new number in your phone in order to undertake road quests. In practice, that means driving to a place, picking a guy up, then driving that guy to another place. At some point in this process you lose the cops.

All well and good, but not overly dramatic. What makes it a lot more hair-raising is every other driver on Los Santos' roads no longer obeys the laws of physics. Even driverless cars are irrepressibly compelled forwards, making it damn-near impossible to actually acquire a car to undertake these missions.

Fortunately, I am a lateral thinker. I simply used my car gun to summon a car directly into a wall. As the unstoppable force met the immoveable object, I was able to get in and go about my business. Sort of. When every car in the game is incapable of stopping but perfectly capable of murder, every single intersection in Los Santos becomes a dance with death.

Even picking up my fare was dicey—as he attempted to get into my car (which was, for whatever reason, an inexplicably snow-covered North Yankton police truck), a taxi cab floated nearby like a leaf on the wind, pancaking a separate pedestrian mere inches from my passenger.

I guess what I'm saying is: walkable urban spaces now.

Take-Two's legal teams seem to be scouring the digital landscape for the identity of one Cyberleek—a leaker that's been making cryptocurrency bank from a copy of Grand Theft Auto 6, releasing footage of a development build to the internet and sticking their tongue out at Strauss Zelnick.

It's been a chaotic mess, and one Take-Two is keen to rectify. The publisher has requested subpoenas from both Microsoft and Discord, the scope of which has some players concerned about the privacy of their accounts.

Specifically in this document, obtained by The Verge, wherein Take-Two is requesting "all identifying information associated with all user accounts that are/were members communicating with the Discord server(s) listed below during the time period from June 1, 2026 to present."

The information includes "the account ID, registration email, registration and last-login IP addresses, phone number, linked connections (Google/Xbox/etc.), any associated device identifiers (MachineGuid/MSA), and content related to Grand Theft Auto ('GTA'), Rockstar or Cyberleek from their OneDrive account."

While I'm not exactly shocked that Take-Two is scouring the internet for the leaker, this does seem like a grim reminder that absolutely nothing you do on the world wide web is anonymous—and if the subpoena goes through, Take-Two could be handed the personal information of thousands.

At the time of writing, the Discord server ! Odyssey has around 5,600 members, while DarkViperAU, a content creator, has over 100,000 members. None of which I would blame for being uncomfortable about Take-Two getting their hands on their personal information, regardless of whether they're in the wrong or not.

Discord's responded to try and assuage those fears for the time being, with marketing director Ryan K. Rigney writing on X: "I can share an update on this: Discord has not yet been served with a subpoena from Take Two. When we do, we'll evaluate the validity and scope before responding."

The subpoena has been approved, just not yet served, as of August 21.

Sometimes happiness isn't a new thing, you know? Sometimes it's about wringing novelty out of what you've already got, finding a new perspective on old things and enjoying them to their fullest.

It is in this spirit that I have not installed a new mod in GTA 5 this week, but used an old one to set a constant and unstoppable momentum on every NPC car in the game. Also, I turned friction off. Specifically, I used the Enhanced Native Trainer that I installed in order to spawn the anti-air truck from the very first mod I put into GTA 5. Turns out there's a whole bunch of stuff in here!

It's really quite wonderful. Los Santos has gone from a humdrum facsimile of Los Angeles to an unforeseeable carnival of movement. Vehicles, newly loosed from their obligations to the ground, now waft lazily through the air. Standing on the balcony of Franklin's home, you can watch them gyrate on the skyline like lightning bugs.

Sometimes you try to cross the road and get vaporised by a transit van travelling at a fraction of the speed of the light. That does also happen sometimes.

It's great fun, though. But I have a confession: originally, I set every car to travel at maximum speed, a setting which was great laughs but made the game functionally unplayable. I have since set them to around 15. I don't know 15 of what, but the setting is 15. The maximum setting was 100, so it's quite a bit lower. It just means all the same chaos that was happening at max speed still happens, just in a way that you stand a hope in hell of navigating.

Welcome to Los Santos, the most airborne little city on Earth.

You might think that Grand Theft Auto 6 leaker Cyberleek, who is currently the target of what I'm sure is a five-alarm manhunt now being conducted by Take-Two and Rockstar, might want to step back into the shadows a bit—keep their head down and hope it all blows over, and all that. But no. In fact, they seem to be taking the opposite approach to their newfound notoriety, because they are now selling ads.

A new "contact" tab on the Cyberleek website says the leaker is "raising funds through community support and strategic partnerships." But not through a typical ransom demand, as is sometimes seen in these sorts of things: "Instead, Cyberleek offers premium advertising space and exclusive content opportunities."

From the website: "Sending a Monero payment enables secure contact via Session messenger for deal negotiations. Options include purchasing ad placements (such as video watermarks) or requesting custom-made gameplay footage tailored to specific brands (including sexual content). All pricing, terms, and deliverables are discussed privately over Session."

Credit to Cyberleek for having a pair, I guess, but this seems like a bad idea (for them) from at least a few angles. First, who's going to take them up on the offer? Slapping your product name on the next Grand Theft Auto 6 video leak is the equivalent of painting a shiny red target on your forehead: I am not a lawyer but there is zero doubt in my mind that people who are—and especially those who are the expensive sort of lawyer that Take-Two has on speed dial, in great numbers—could find a multitude of ways to turn that into some sort of accessory culpability. I can't imagine a faster or more effective way to turn your brand untouchably toxic than by connecting it to this gong show.

The price of the program is also astonishing. It costs a "donation" of 400 Monero XMR, which currently converts to, roughly, $164,730. That's right, one hundred sixty-four thousand, seven-hundred thirty dollars. And for that, you get not an ad, but a message from Cyberleek, which is presumably when the ad buy negotiation actually begins.

That really makes the whole thing feel like a lark, but as the saying goes, it's a crazy ol' world. If even one person decides they want to give this a shot, that's a pretty sweet payday.

On top of all that ridiculousness, this is also just a tremendously risky move for Cyberleek. Opening the door to external contact is begging for trouble. Remember when Valve tried to nail the hacker who made off with a pre-release copy by offering him a job? Selling ads is an invitation to exactly that sort of action on the part of Take-Two and/or any number of US law enforcement agencies, and while I'm sure Cyberleek thinks they're too smart to fall for that sort of thing, that's exactly what everyone thinks before they fall for it.

Not that I'm concerned about Cyberleek's welfare here. If anything, I'm fascinated by the sheer brashness of a guy who's going out of his way to rub his stuff in the face of one of the most powerful game publishers in the world, on the eve of its greatest triumph. I just feel compelled to say it as a matter of principle: This is a bad idea. But hey, if Cyberleek ends up getting busted because of it? I'm not gonna lie, it'll be pretty funny, too.

As the Grand Theft Auto 6 leaks continue to flow, Take-Two Interactive has begun the hunt for the people behind them. A Kotaku report says the GTA publisher has filed subpoenas with Microsoft and Discord, requesting user data and records of accounts that were involved in sharing the leaks.

Take-Two "has submitted a sworn declaration confirming that the purpose for which the DMCA subpoena is sought is to obtain the identity of an alleged infringer or infringers," the filing states.

Both Microsoft and Discord have until September 4 to provide data including "business records and investigative records associated with Microsoft’s internal investigation of the ‘cyberleek’ persona sufficient to identify the user(s)," and on the Discord side, "all identifying information associated with all user accounts that are/were members communicating with the Discord server(s)" connected to the leaks.

Well, it was bound to happen. It's all fun and games until the lawyers show up, as the saying goes, and there was never any question that Take-Two was going to unleash its full range of resources on tracking down the leakers and inflicting whatever punishments our shareholder value-driven society will allow.

Leaking short bits of video from a game we all know is happening might seem like small potatoes compared to all the actual crimes that are happening around us every day, but have no doubt, this is serious. To paraphrase a well-known line from a popular show, you never mess with the money: Nintendo destroyed a man's life because he sold ROMs for the Switch, and it's reasonable to assume Take-Two will be at least that aggressive in protecting GTA 6. It does have a history of that sort of thing, after all.

I think the great likelihood is that Cyberleek's days of anonymity are numbered. PC Gamer editor Tyler Wilde dug up some clues about the leaker's identity shortly after the leaks began, and that's entirely without the weight of an expensive legal team and the US justice system behind him. Given the resources Take-Two can bring to bear, and the seeming brashness of the leaker, I wouldn't be surprised if this one is wrapped up relatively quickly.

For now, though, Cyberleek is still doing their thing. The latest GTA 6 leak landed earlier today, dispelling speculation that the leaker had already been caught and giving us two minutes of a supercar driving through the streets of Vice City. It's extremely impressive visually, but in terms of gameplay, well, it's definitely GTA.

Take-Two's market cap also took a $2.8 billion hit in the wake of the leaks, which sounds like a lot but really isn't: The company's total market cap currently sits around $45 billion, and the share price has bounced back to roughly where it was when all this started.

Another day has dawned, and the mutual embarrassment of the games industry and gameplaying public continues: The enigmatic Cyberleek has uploaded yet another short video of leaked GTA 6 gameplay, marking the fourth consecutive day of GTA 6 leak releases. And based on their latest threat, the cryptopeddling leaker intends to keep that streak going.

As for what the latest gameplay leak reveals: Well, it looks like Grand Theft Auto. Titled "hypercar.mp4," the video—which we won't be sharing, but can be sought out without much effort—consists of GTA 6 protagonist Jason jacking a high performance sports car and driving at high speeds along Vice City's surrounding highways for roughly two minutes.

The footage is fairly thin on new mechanical revelations: While carjacking, it seems like Jason has the ability to mash a button to more quickly and forcefully pull the driver from the vehicle in exchange for stamina—and, presumably, a higher chance of the crime being noticed. We also see further evidence of the visual ID mechanics present in earlier leaks, as icons appeared to indicate both the stolen vehicle and Jason's appearance were tied to his wanted level once the crime was reported.

Additionally, after escaping the wanted level he accrued with the car theft, we see a reappearance of a blue police awareness indicator as Jason passes a patrol car while speeding through traffic on the opposite side of the highway, reinforcing the sense that the player will more easily draw police attention based on how conspicuous their actions are.

Shortly afterwards, Jason drives through an area that's outlined with a red border on the minimap, immediately gaining a two-star wanted level. It's not clear why, and the wanted level drops as soon as he drives back out of it. We can only speculate, but it's possible the highway passed over some sort of high security area.

Otherwise, the footage isn't particularly remarkable. The driving physics seem like they'd be familiar to anyone who's spent time driving in GTA 5, though it's still not clear how recent of a game build these leaks are being captured from. The most striking thing on display is its demonstration of GTA 6's lighting tech: Throughout the video, the light cast by the hypercar's headlights reflects believably off puddles, roadsigns, and reflective markers, providing impressive contrast and visual texture as the landscape blurs by.

And, as we've come to expect, the video is also a vehicle for Cyberleek's cryptocurrency push, urging viewers to "show support" by buying their bespoke gamer currency. It remains unclear how, exactly, we're meant to believe that buying cryptocurrency empowers the fight for gamers' rights, but you can put whatever text on the internet you want, I suppose.

What is clear is that Cyberleek doesn't intend to stop: The trademark globs of roaming watermark text, URLs, and QR code that have graced each of these leaked videos now features the threat "HIGHER MARKETCAP = MORE LEEKS." While that's in line with the thin anti-corporate veneer that's accompanied Cyberleek's previous works, it's worth noting that Take-Two has actually lost roughly $2.8 billion in market cap this week as its share price has fallen over the last few days. Whatever gets more people looking at your coolguy onion mascot, I guess.

One of the biggest stories this week has been of the enigmatic, self-described consumer hero Cyberleek, who's also using this whole debacle as a way to advertise and pay for their cryptocurrency. Which is probably fine and normal and not at all a concerning spectre lingering around one of the biggest games of the year.

Anyway, you'd think Take-Two and Strauss Zelnick might be feeling hot under the collar about all of this, and you'd be partially right. As spotted by Insider Gaming, Take-Two's market price (the price of one share) was around $248 before the leaks. Fast-forward a couple of days, and that same market price dropped to a low of $233.

This hit Take-Two's market cap (share price, times the amount of shares) to the tune of billions—around $2.83 billion in two days. An astronomical amount of money by any stretch of the imagination, a huge devaluation that's… actually not even much of a sweat, really.

See, Take-Two's overall market cap was still over $43 billion and, by virtue of how stock markets tend to shift and fluctuate, not even that much of a rare occurrence. On August 6, the market price dropped to a measly $229, for instance, before spiking back up to $242 the next day.

And while the overall market price between August 18 and 20 does trend downwards, it's already rising back up. At the time of writing, said market price has recovered to $241, with the market cap rising from that $43 billion total to almost $44.9 billion—just $1 billion within its previous number.

Look, while I don't think anyone at Take-Two's exactly happy to be losing a couple billion dollars in market cap to some guy peddling cryptocurrency with a full copy of their next big thing, what feels more noteworthy is the fact that a leak of this scale has mostly just pinged off the videogame giant's armour.

It's a humbling reminder of the sheer amount of money that gets poured into videogames at this scale—humbling or perhaps distressing, given the size of the industry tracks precious little to its security.

The US Army's 3rd Infantry Division has confirmed that it is indeed offering a four-day pass in November to soldiers who reenlist for at least two years, so they can play Grand Theft Auto 6 when it comes out.

The "Special Reenlistment Incentive" memo is dated July 28, and came to light via the US Army WTF! Moments account on Instagram. It states, quite explicitly, that "any soldier who signs a reenlistment contract between 1 August 2026 and 14 November 2026 will be authorized for a special four day pass. This special pass is specifically designated to coincide with the highly anticipated release of the videogame Grand Theft Auto 6."

As a lifelong civilian, that struck me as odd. I know the military has sometimes struggled to meet recruitment goals (although apparently it's doing pretty well these days, perhaps or perhaps not the sort of thing that happens when people can't afford groceries anymore), but would the Army really leverage GTA to convince its people to stick around for a few more years?

Well, yes. "The idea was to have a unique incentives program that connects to what soldiers are interested in," Lt. Col. Angel Tomko told me. "The command team, in conjunction with the career counselor, wanted to get soldiers excited to reenlist. The command team thinks eligible soldiers are more aware that they are in their window for reenlistment and engage their leadership and the career counselor earlier to see available opportunities.

"The battalion has a new career counselor who approached unit leadership with an idea for an updated creative incentives program to reach FY27 reenlistment goals. Eligible soldiers must reenlist for a minimum of two years, up to six years."

Tomko said the GTA 6 offer is not Army-wide, but rather a program unique to the 3rd Infantry Division, of which the 9th Brigade Engineer Battalion is a part. It also seems to be quite successful: Tomko said there are 130 soldiers in the battalion who are eligible for the incentive and so far 20 have chosen it.

And apparently, this is novel but not unusual. "Reenlistment incentives are routine for the US Army to reward our soldiers," Tomko said. "We want to retain the best talent and it’s a credit to the creativity of the career counselor within the organization to develop this unique opportunity surrounding the launch of this popular videogame."

Based on reactions to the report on social media, it's fair to say that some find the idea of using a popular videogame to keep the ranks filled a bit distasteful. And fairly so: Four days in exchange for two years (or more) hardly seems a good deal, especially during a time of what often feels like aimless American adventurism.

And it can feel downright predatory when taken in the context of, for example, this ABC report on military recruitment, which throws a disheartening light on the imbalance between high school kids with few opportunities and a massive, savvy organization who knows how to target them: "Among the recruits and prospective recruits interviewed, only two said they knew what a secretary of defense is, and neither could identify who currently holds the position."

At the same time, it's likely that at least some of those 20 who took advantage of the offer were planning to reenlist anyway, and are just opting for the GTA 6 pass because, hey, why not? More to the point, unlike the new recruits interviewed in that ABC report, soldiers eligible for the offer are already in the Army: They may not know who the secretary of defense is either, but they are at least hip to what's in store.

Regardless of the reactions elsewhere, Tomko said the response to the incentive program among soldiers has been extremely positive.

"The heightened interest in the press does not change the purpose of the program: to reward dedicated soldiers for service to their nation," Tomko explained. "Every soldier who is eligible for this program is already serving, already trained, and already fully qualified. Reenlistment incentives are a longstanding part of Army retention, and units often tailor them to their formations in ways that build morale and spark early conversations about career options.

"Soldiers who reenlist often have multiple incentive options depending on their Military Occupational Specialty, service needs, and eligibility, and range from time off, to money or duty location of choice. This specific incentive is for all soldiers in 9th Engineer Battalion and is an administrative bonus layered on top of standard reenlistment incentives."

The US military has a history of using videogames as part of its recruitment efforts. The America's Army shooter series debuted in 2002, almost 25 years ago—perhaps not coincidentally, just months after the start of what's now referred to as the Global War on Terrorism. In 2018 the Army launched its own esports team, which operates as part of its "Marketing and Engagement Brigade based at Fort Knox," and in 2020 it began a Twitch channel for game streams. That endeavor had a rough start, but the Army's esports org remains active, and continues to stream.

The great Grand Theft Auto 6 leaks continued today with a new video from Leek, and this one is particularly impressive, and damaging, because now it looks like the leaker really does have access to a playable build of the game.

The bulk of the video shows a blue and yellow biplane flying over Vice City, and even as someone who's not a GTA fan I have to agree with posters on Reddit that it looks very impressive: Massive, detailed, and almost shockingly realistic.

Cars can be seen moving on the streets and freeways below, even at great distances; you can't judge too much from a relatively low-resolution video posted on social media, but it looks smooth and steady, and there's virtually no discernable texture pop.

There's also a few seconds spent with the in-game radio, a vital part of any GTA experience. I was a little disappointed that V-Rock got passed over (you never say "no" to Stevie Nicks) but there looks to be a nice variety of tunes on tap, as you'd expect.

The kicker, though, comes at the end. Having exited his plane, our hero Jason takes a rifle and shoots the word "LEEK" into a wall. This is meaningful: While previous clips could have come from someone flipping off an NDA from a Rockstar presentation—possibly from the upcoming Netflix showcase, although most of the clips look like unedited randomness and not the sort of thing you'd use to show off your game on national television—this bit of shooting is far too bespoke for anything but actions specifically taken by the leaker.

It's not absolute confirmation that Leek has a playable build of GTA 6. It's possible they used generative AI to create the sequence and then appended it to the flyover segment—some have speculated that some or all of the leaked clips have been AI generated, although the speed with which they've been struck down pretty strongly suggests they're legit.

That makes it very likely that Leek really does have a playable GTA 6 build on his hands, or at least had access to one at some point. And if that's the case, with three months left before GTA 6 debuts on consoles, Rockstar and Take-Two have serious headaches on their hands.

A manifesto shared yesterday by the people responsible for the big Grand Theft Auto 6 leak contains a lot of language that will be familiar to anyone following the Stop Killing Games campaign, most notably a demand that any game with singleplayer content have an "offline fallback state" ensuring that games remain playable when their external server support has ended. In response, Stop Killing Games has now issued a statement disavowing the whole thing and urging its followers to "not participate or engage with these kinds of actions."

Stop Killing Games said the leaks appear genuine, noting the speed with which GTA publisher Take-Two Interactive has been issuing copyright strikes against them. Be that as it may, it also pointed out that the leaker is using the leak to promote a memecoin, "attaching crypto links and QR codes to the footage and asking people to pay for more."

"Do not send these people your money, no matter how much sympathy you may feel for their actions," Stop Killing Games said in a statement posted on Reddit. "This is illegal, and frankly, we feel for everyone at Rockstar having to go through this ordeal again, especially just over a week before Rockstar’s own official 'Extended Look' premieres.

"Using illegal means to make a point is unacceptable to us and does nothing to protect our right to keep using what we paid for. No matter how strongly you disagree with the decisions of upper management at these companies, there are still thousands of developers who worked hard on this project, and they’re the ones being hit the hardest."

That's the tipping point for a lot of people, myself included I love a good leak, but there's a world of difference between, say, Sony accidentally blasting an entire Destiny 2 expansion all over the internet days before it was meant to, and someone making an effort to acquire and share unreleased information.

How the leakers came across these GTA 6 clips, whether it was an actual 'hack' or just someone egregiously violating an NDA (which, despite the prevalence of Hackerman drama in popular media, is so often the case), isn't currently known, but it's also immaterial here: This is the kind of leak that will be aggressively pursued and punished by Rockstar, Take-Two, and the US government, and it's entirely unsurprising that Stop Killing Games, which has built up significant political momentum over the past couple years, would want to distance itself as much as possible.

SKG also noted the likelihood of a bad outcome for the GTA 6 leaker, writing in its statement that "the last person who did this to Rockstar, back in 2022, ended up with an indefinite hospital order." (That person, Arion Kurtaj, is now out of hospital and in prison, awaiting a retrial for his role in a 2022 hack that revealed GTA 6 to the world more than a year ahead of its official announcement.) It urged followers to channel their frustration into "something constructive" instead, adding that leaks like this "risks tarnishing the reputation of our communities and our chances to make change."

"We are expecting for this to go on, and it is already being mentioned in our discussions with lawmakers, negatively. Do not participate or engage with these kinds of actions.'

The leaks have indeed continued: At least two more purported GTA 6 videos have surfaced today. The official GTA 6 reveal is set to take place on August 27, initially on Netflix and then six hours later for everyone else.

Grand Theft Auto 6 will, I am assured, have the greatest NPCs of all time. They will be perfect human simulacra, indistinguishable from the meaty lifeforms behind the controller.

My goal: to make GTA 5's barely-living NPCs an approximation of that. So I installed two mods: NPC Check On Player and NPCs Get Wanted Stars. The former makes the citizens of Los Santos more polite—they will get out of their cars and check you are okay if they run you over. The latter makes them punishable when they are impolite—when they commit crimes, they will earn their own wanted stars, and find themselves pursued by cops.

I'll be honest, I mostly installed the NPC Check mod because I hoped it would compel them to stand still when they got wanted stars from hurting me, but hey, it does what it says on the tin. Get pancaked by a car and the driver will screech to a halt, get out, and walk over to check if you're okay.

The problem is that you can only say 'Yes, I'm fine,' which is not really what I want to say to a guy who has just run me over. Plus, the key to say you are fine is Y, which is also the key to go to sleep in my already-installed Roleplay Alone mod. I am constantly getting hit by cars, then falling asleep in the middle of the road as I try to convince the drivers I am okay, which I guess is good enough for them, as they immediately hop back in their rides and drive off.

NPCs Get Wanted Stars, though, is a bit more dramatic. Admittedly, GTA 5's non-playable inhabitants aren't exactly prone to random criminal acts, so you do have to bait them into it.

My advice? Run into them at a full sprint over and over again, until they (unreasonably) get mad enough to throw a punch at you. Ideally, do this in front of a police station, then sit back and smirk as the 5-0 chase down their perp, cuff them, and stand around rather confused about what, exactly, to do next, as if they've not been trained for outcomes that don't involve a bullet-riddled suspect.

The realism is off the charts.

Take-Two Interactive, the publisher who oversees studios like Rockstar and Gearbox, had an AI guy. 'Had' being the operative word, seeing as he, and a decent chunk of its then-AI team, were laid off around a year after he took on the role. Dicken was previously a data scientist at Zynga, before becoming its director of applied AI in 2019, when a lot of generative AI and LLM technology was still in its infancy.

As someone who was the head of AI for one of the biggest videogame publishers on the planet, capable of making such tectonic swings that other developers are scampering to get out of its videogame's launch date, you'd think that Dicken would be one of the true believer types. It's my pleasure to, via an in-depth interview from The Side Quest, reveal that Dicken is actually overall pretty skeptical.

It's not as if he's given up on the technology entirely—but he certainly speaks with the same echo as many industry skeptics, including (perhaps tellingly) Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick himself.

First up, there's the public perception, which—when discussing Clair Obscur's lost Indie award wins after its own AI placeholder debacle—says that creatives in the industry "see the use of generative AI as an abdication of intentionality, as an abdication of authorial intent. And consequently they assume, in a lot of cases rightly (I'll caveat the hell out of what I'm saying here) but in a lot of cases rightly, that's a pervasive abdication of authorial intent."

As for the masses, "Western audiences, so North America, Europe, seem to be more strongly anti-generative. And anecdotally, what I've heard is that Asian audiences are more accepting and more tolerant of this stuff … The internet's not representative of the mass audience. So to what extent is the anti-GenAI sentiment mainstream versus vocal minority? I don't have an answer to that."

What has Dicken more skeptical from a place of authority, however, is the actual graft of how videogames are made. For example, a lot of videogames with AI-generated dialogue haven't taken off the ground because, well, more isn't always more:

"Games are curated experiences. When you look at a dialogue tree and there's three options, yeah, you could make that 50, 100, we could have made it 100 options without generative AI... you've got 100 options, but only two of them get you to where you actually are trying to go. Adding more options is not the answer."

Then there's the actual purported productivity gains where, even in areas like coding, where AI seems to've dug its heels in the most, Dicken says it's debatable: "I often see people throwing around, like, oh, my engineers are 100x engineers because of Claude Code … [but] individuals are not necessarily reliable narrators of what the impact is, so you need to be quantifying objectively, and very few people want to run those case studies."

On the flipside, "If you're a true believer, it's so obvious that it's having this massive impact, why would you run a case study? Why would you spend the time?"

It's that true believer-ism that Dicken seems the most vocally opposed to, though—batting aside the promises of generative AI as some miracle tool, because as he sees it, in a gold rush, people don't sell you the tools if they could sell you gold.

"If any of this shit actually did what people are billing it as, they would not be talking about it," Dicken says. "These would be protected like the crown jewels and Fort Knox combined … It's like the guy sat here telling you that there's a gold rush going and you need to get in on the gold rush, buy my pickaxe. The guy should be selling you the gold if he's actually got the gold."

That's not to say companies aren't able to screw you over if they have sold you the tools. For many, the price of tokens has risen substantially, a sort of looming 'oh, crap, we're in a bubble' situation that, among other things, caused the CEO of Palantir to have a bit of a meltdown on television.

Which isn't great if you're a company, because at least with employees, you decide how much you pay them—you don't get that luxury if you're leaning half of your workload on AI: "Where you bake it into a pipeline, and that pipeline has now rigidity, and you are now vendor-locked to something that you know is going to get its price jacked up."

The Side Quest compares it, aptly, to the Unity debacle wherein the ubiquitous engine suddenly jacked up its prices, leading to a year of outrage and what I can only describe as reputational implosion. "We're sleepwalking into that same situation," Dicken agrees.

And yet, the goldrush mentality persists—even as corporations repeatedly pants themselves: "These are organizations that are supposed to be serious organizations that you would imagine would have guardrails against this stuff … The FOMO and the newness and the velocity and all of these things are contributing to an environment where you can't get the guardrails down fast enough to actually prevent some of the crazy."

As for where he sees it all landing, Dicken's experience in working with AI since the technology's inception

"I think that there will be an amount of long-term changes. But in the way that the industry had to figure out how to adopt 3D tools like Maya, it's not going to be the seismic shift. That's my sense. Could be wrong … I think that they are not a trillion dollar business that's going to revolutionise everything. But as a piece of technology, I want to figure out what these things could do for games."

Still, even if I personally eye-roll at the prospect of having AI in videogames—outside of hypothetically neat toys—Dicken is at least cognisant of the fact you need to actually use the correct tool for the job, not just cram AI-generated slop into existing genres or types of games and expect it to work.

"There is a fundamental thesis to a game, and what you put into that game needs to align with that thesis." Examples where this goes wrong, Dicken adds, "is just shoving stuff in to tick the finance earnings call investor box, rather than trying to build the best damn thing you can build that's going to earn the most money, because it's building something that people want."

Rockstar's been embroiled for some time in a legal dispute after firing 30 unionised workers in the UK, which has, naturally, been seen as union-busting behaviour by those impacted. The workers, who are part of The Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB), have been making solid progress.

In June of this year, it was decided that IWGB would be allowed to present its case that Rockstar had allegedly blacklisted its unionised employees—as in, compiled a list of union members—which would be in violation of The Employment Relations Act, which plainly states that you can't compile a "details of persons who are or have been members of trade unions" for the purposes of "treating a person less favourably than another on grounds of trade union membership or trade union activities."

The full trial will be held in September, but in the meantime, the IWGB has stated that folks excited for GTA 6 don't have to boycott the game on their behalf. In a recent video, fired employees stated: "We're going to make it easy for you. Don't boycott GTA 6, win justice for the people who helped make it.

"We spent years pouring our hard work, skill, and creativity into making GTA. And we want people to experience the universe that we helped build. But that doesn't mean we want you to let Rockstar off the hook."

They then go on to remind us of the shockingly cutthroat way in which they were fired—which the union called, back then, "one of the most blatant and ruthless acts of union busting in the history of the games industry."

The video continues: "Without warning, we were called into meetings and fired without representation, evidence, or a chance to respond. In minutes, we lost our jobs, our income, our work on GTA, and had 'gross misconduct' stamped on our records."

Instead, the union calls for concerned gamers to buy a t-shirt from the IWGB, with all proceeds going towards legal funds for the upcoming dispute.

Rockstar insists that the developers in question "distributed and discussed confidential information", something the IWGB described as an attempt to "mischaracterise workers speaking about their working conditions in a private forum as 'leaking information'." Then-prime minister Keir Starmer commented on the dismissal as "a deeply concerning case."

Cyberleek, the group or person (it's not clear which) behind today's big Grand Theft Auto 6 leak, claims it's not just doing it for the lulz. In a manifesto calling out industry practices it finds objectionable, Cyberleek warned that it will continue targeting publishers who violate its edicts.

"Publishers sell licenses and call them purchases," the document states. "They ship unfinished games and call them living services. They lock content on discs and call it DLC. They kill games and keep the money. Every year anti-consumerism tightens its grip, and every year gamers get less for what they pay."

Cyberleek said it's "raising funds for a secret project," presumably through the sale of a memecoin—of course there's a memecoin—which will be "directed toward the infrastructure needed to strike, as well as the security and protection required to withstand the inevitable corporate counterattacks."

They also listed three "commandments" in the manifesto—no digital preorders, no "fake" (ie, already part of the game data) singleplayer DLC, and mandatory "offline fallback states" for singleplayer games—and warned that publishers who violate them will be subject to sanction: "Cyberleek will not stop until they issue a public statement and apology with a concrete commitment to be better. Words are not enough; restitution is mandatory."

It's all very dramatic in a "Remember, remember" way, and certainly overegged; there's also an irony, perhaps unintentional, in holding forth on consumer rights while pumping crypto. Regardless of motivations, though, this is surely a headache Rockstar and Take-Two could do without. There's been no public comment yet, but copyright strikes against the leaks have been flying fast and furious, rather strongly suggesting that these leaks are legit.

Cyberleek's bravado may be its undoing (because isn't that always the way) and its ability to follow through on its threats is obviously a big question. But with Grand Theft Auto 6 now just three months away from release on consoles—and the big Netflix reveal coming next week—it might be able to do some real damage before the curtain falls.

I've reached out to Take-Two and Rockstar for comment and will update if I receive a reply.

Even though we still haven't seen a gameplay trailer, Grand Theft Auto 6's pre-release sales have been "unprecedented," according to publisher Take-Two. So why doesn't the public company just tell us specifically how many GTA 6 preorders it's sold?

Bloomberg's Jason Schreier recently posed that question to Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick, who said that the volume of GTA 6 preorders is so unprecedented that they "can't tell whether they mean anything."

Specifically, Take-Two is unsure whether the preorder count can be used to accurately estimate GTA 6's total launch sales based on established wisdom, or if it's such an outlier that established wisdom doesn't apply, and people who'd normally wait to buy the game after launch are opting to preorder.

"The massive demand for preorders we've seen to date could reflect a pull forward of sales that otherwise would materialize in the fullness of time," Zelnick said.

Because they "simply don't know the demand curve because it's just never happened before," the CEO says that "the raw numbers could potentially be misleading," and as such Take-Two is keeping them to itself for now. (Though it is clearly happy to indicate that GTA 6 is already an extraordinary success.)

The next big moment for GTA 6 is a proper gameplay reveal, which will debut exclusively on Netflix on August 27, and then on Rockstar's public YouTube channel six hours later.

Regarding that controversial deal (I don't think it shows much respect for GTA fans myself), Zelnick told Bloomberg only that "there's reasoning" behind it and we'll "understand more" once we watch it.

All this talk of GTA 6 preorders is purely academic for the PC-only crowd, as there's still no PC release date for the game. The console-only launch is frustrating for PC gamers however you slice it, but it's made extra irritating by today's inflated console prices: The PlayStation 5 Pro currently goes for $900.

Grand Theft Auto 6's potential price-point was a thing of much consternation in the lead-up to its reveal. Months of rumours—and even the Bank of America getting involved in the discourse, because why not—led to the question: Are they really gonna charge $100 for this thing?

You're reading this article because they didn't, but you're also reading this article because they sort of did. See, GTA 6 has both an $80 version and a $100 version, the latter of which hides some potentially major parts of its identity behind the upgrade, including a handful of stores that may very well remind you that you've not shelled out every time you go near them.

There's this itchy capitalist feeling that Rockstar probably did actually want to charge a hundo for the thing, but didn't, because that'd have gamers up in arms—as it turns out, that might've been the smart play. In a recent interview with CNBC, Take-Two interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick says:

"It's skewing more to the premium edition, but that might be a reflection of the fact that the most avid consumers are the ones that are pre-ordering now," Zelnick says, before adding that they're unlikely to lower the game's price point themselves, even if retailers might want to reduce their own margin to draw in customers:

"We preserved our pricing on Grand Theft Auto 5 for a very long time—much longer than a standard release of an entertainment property."

Now sure—as Zelnick says, this is a case of sample size. I'd be very surprised if, writ large, most people had $100 in their pocket to shell out for a video game, even one as glitzy and prestigious as GTA 6. I reckon he's on the money (pun intended) about more excited gamers being more likely to both pre-order and spend the extra dough.

But it very much feels like GTA 6 is, in combination with the content locked off behind that paywall, basically $100. And if what Zelnick says is true—that those sales are split down the middle with a lean towards $100—then Take-Two has effectively gotten away with charging $90 for the game's pre-order when every last bead on the abacus is set into place.

And man, my feelings are mixed. Yes, $100 is a lot of money to spend on an entertainment product in the, uh, interesting financial times we live in. But there is the elephant in the room that the production of big-budget games like GTA 6 has absolutely outstripped inflation. Would I pay $100 for a videogame? No, even on principle. But given it took literal, actual billions to make, $100 is technically low-balling it.

You have to wonder if GTA 6 might even be part of an endangered species, now. Sure, we'll get other Grand Theft Auto games assuming we're all still around in 10+ years, but can an industry that's so hungry to chase quarterly results at the exchange of all else sustain anything else of that game's scale and budget? Probably not, but hey—maybe things'll get healthier and less layoff-happy in a decade. One can hope.

You won't win any prizes for guessing that Grand Theft Auto 5 has sold well since its initial 2013 release, several lifetimes ago, but on a recent Take-Two earnings call, CEO Strauss Zelnick revealed the up-to-date, astronomical figure: 230 million copies.

"The Grand Theft Auto series once again exceeded expectations, and to date, Grand Theft Auto 5 has sold over 230 million units worldwide," Zelnick told investors on the August 7 call. "Recurrent consumer spending for the series grew 3% and GTA Plus continues to thrive. All led by a series of content offerings, including the addition of the Rockstar Mission Creator, an all-new suite of innovative and in-depth tools, empowering the player community to bring missions to life.

"Global excitement for the launch of Grand Theft Auto 6 continues to build, with the title having an exceptional start to pre-orders. With Rockstar Games' recent announcement of Grand Theft Auto 6 and extended look on August 27, we believe the consumers' passion and anticipation for the next evolution of this iconic series will grow further, leading up to the title's November 19 release."

230 million is obviously a lot of copies, but it has a vague "number big" quality without added context. I'll endeavor to provide some in the form of funny statistics and back of the napkin math to drive it home:

• That's over 10 times the estimated lifetime sales of Baldur's Gate 3 (20 million), and 5 times that of Cyberpunk 2077 (40 million).
• GTA5 has sold an average of 17.7 million copies per year, a number uncomfortably close to the 25 million lifetime sales achieved by the bottom entries of Wikipedia's list of the top 50 best-selling games of all time (GTA 5 is third on that list).
• Breaking that down further, GTA 5's average sales of 1.5 million copies per month as a lifetime figure would make for a double-A development success story or indie royalty.
• It's about two thirds the population of the United States, and almost four times that of the United Kingdom.
• Still nowhere near Tetris (estimated 520 million) or Minecraft (est. 400 million).

Number indeed big. It gives you a sense of just what Take-Two is hoping to accomplish with GTA 6 and its estimated multi-billion dollar development budget. Rockstar's upcoming game is an entertainment juggernaut that has every other developer reassessing their fall release schedule, but it also has massive shoes to fill as far as the hungry hungry shareholders are concerned.

Let's be real, come August 27, the Grand Theft Auto 6 "extended look" is not going to be exclusive to Netflix for six hours as advertised. It's going to be exclusive to Netflix for however long it takes for someone to record it and distribute a torrent.

You wouldn't download a car, but would you download an ad for a game about stealing cars?

It would be, I've now had to consider, technically piracy to do so. After all, Netflix probably paid good money for the privilege of being the first to show the world GTA 6 gameplay, although we can only guess, because the financial terms of the deal haven't been disclosed.

Aside from whatever funds exchanged hands, GTA publisher Take-Two's motivation for the deal is to signal that GTA 6 is a cultural event that transcends the gaming scene. And Netflix gets to be associated with that cultural event.

I get Netflix's angle. I don't get Take-Two's, unless the payday was astronomical. Everyone already knows GTA is a big deal, and it's plain disrespectful to GTA fans to turn the gameplay trailer they've been waiting for into a money-making opportunity, especially given that many of them have already pre-ordered the game.

Having to wait six hours to watch a trailer is a relatively minor inconvenience, all things considered, but monetizing a trailer is just tacky. It certainly doesn't reinforce Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick's claim that GTA 6 is an "incredible bargain" at $80-$100. It suggests, instead, that we should brace for maximum nickel-and-diming and FOMO exploitation.

I suppose this is how it goes when you don't have to worry about your reputation. There's not much Take-Two and Rockstar could do to hurt GTA 6's sales at this point: They've already sold a zillion pre-orders (or something like that) without any gameplay trailer at all. If there is a line that can't be crossed, it's a couple celestial bodies removed from a tacky gameplay reveal or a new labor scandal.

When the GTA 6 extended look debuts on Netflix on August 27, we'll watch it and report on its contents here, but I imagine a quick scan of social media will allow you to illicitly experience the marketing beat early, if you're the sort of outlaw who dares to watch pirated videogame trailers.

After letting the speculation machine run wild for months, Take-Two announced in June that Grand Theft Auto 6 will launch with an $80 price tag for the basic, missing-some-stuff edition. That's a lot of money, especially when you consider that most people will feel compelled to lay out the extra $20 for the Ultimate Edition, which promises "an exclusive collection of premium vehicles, weapons, apparel, and action threaded across all aspects of Jason and Lucia’s story." But Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick reckons it's actually a heck of a deal for what you're getting.

Asked about the $80 price point for GTA 6—and the decision to leave NBA 2K27 at $70—during today's investors call, Zelnick repeated a point he's made previously: That Take-Two aims to "deliver way more value to consumers than what we charge them."

"The real cost of a triple-A videogame is a whole lot lower today than it was 20 years ago. Pricing has not kept pace with inflation," Zelnick said. "And our goal is to continue to overdeliver for our consumers because how you feel about any experience is the intersection of the experience itself and what you paid for it.

"To say that we expect that Grand Theft Auto 6 will be an incredible bargain as experiences go is a gross understatement, because Rockstar Games is known for overdelivering."

Not every game is Grand Theft Auto 6, a point made earlier this year by Bank of America securities analyst Omar Dessouky, who warned that if Take-Two didn't increase the GTA 6 price, the industry as a whole would probably be stuck at the $70 price point for years to come. So while GTA 6 will launch at the increased price point, Zelnick said not all Take Two's games will.

"Our goal is not to maximize price," Zelnick said. "So in this case, I think what we’ve decided to do makes a whole lot of sense in the context of what we’re delivering, and that’s the lens through which we’ll look going forward as well."

Grand Theft Auto 6 remains scheduled for release, on consoles, on November 19. We'll get our first look at gameplay on August 27, at 12 pm PT/3 pm ET on Netflix, and then six hours later on YouTube.

During Take-Two's latest earnings call, CEO Strauss Zelnick said the current computing hardware crisis—you know, the one that's making it more economical to fly roundtrip from the UK to buy an MSRP GPU at Nvidia's QuakeCon booth than it is to buy one anywhere online—is, to quote the man directly, "not a good thing."

But while the skyrocketing costs of consoles and components are threatening to price customers out of the pastime, Zelnick said Take-Two doesn't see increasingly inaccessible gaming hardware as an insurmountable problem. In part, that's because Rockstar's parent company expects a lot more of us will be streaming games in the near future.

The "advent of streaming," Zelnick said, is something that Take-Two believes is "right around the corner, in terms of having something that's low latency and really works well for consumers. Machines that weren't game machines before will become game machines."

As a result, the company imagines its customer base will continue to grow as cloud gaming becomes standardized, regardless of what happens to the traditional gaming hardware market.

That's "if you believe in streaming," Zelnick said, "and to be clear, we really do. And I'm happy to put a timeline on it. I think we'll be in commercial streaming mode within three years."

By Zelnick's estimate, broader adoption of cloud gaming could effectively increase Take-Two's potential user base tenfold. That wouldn't necessarily produce a tenfold increase in revenue, he said, as the company's most "avid" customers are those who already have traditional gaming hardware. But game streaming "creates great opportunity for titles that are broadly desirable, even outside of core markets."

Some amount of Zelnick's vision of a glorious and lucrative game streaming future is believable: It's easy to imagine that there's a number of people out there who might, for instance, be interested in playing Take-Two games like GTA 6 even if they aren't otherwise compelled to invest in a gaming setup—especially as the cost of building one continues to rise.

But for streaming to become a more common standard in gaming, it'll need to overcome profound—and intensifying—anxieties about game and media ownership. From the Stop Killing Games effort to the outcry provoked by Sony's announcing an end of disc production, there's a justifiable unease among consumers about being left with no way to access games outside of streaming and subscription services that can be shuttered as soon as they stop generating the requisite revenue figures.

Even Hideo Kojima's in his feelings about it, recently sharing his fears that "we will not be able to freely access the movies, books, and music that we have loved." While Zelnick was bullish about digital media distribution elsewhere in this week's earnings call, it's worth noting that he previously went on record in 2020 as being "highly skeptical that subscriptions will be the only way or primary way that interactive entertainment is distributed."

In time, however, we might validate the prediction of Ubisoft director of subscriptions Philippe Tremblay, who said in 2024 that gamers would get "comfortable with not owning your game." If the hardware cost crisis continues to worsen, we might not have a choice.

Take-Two Interactive chief Strauss Zelnick has waded into the discs vs. digital debate, and given the company's decision to release Grand Theft Auto 6 exclusively in digital format, you probably won't be surprised to find that he thinks discs "don't really make sense" these days.

PC gamers have lived in an almost fully digital world for years, thanks primarily to the rise of Steam, but it's different on the console side of things, where physical game releases, and retailers like GameStop, are still a regular part of life. But two things have shaken that foundation recently: The lack of a physical edition of GTA 6—a game so big it really does have the potential for that kind of industry-wide impact—and Sony's decision to end disc production in 2028.

That's got some console gamers a little shook, but Zelnick doesn't think it's going to matter much because the digital revolution has mostly already happened anyway. "Our business is well over 90% digitally distributed as it is. It’s already a digital business," he said in today's earnings call. "So in certain instances, especially if it’s a big game, discs—and note I said discs—don’t really make sense for the consumer.

"Also, most instances you have to register online to play anyhow. So if you’re already connected, who cares if you download digitally? It’s all the same and it’s much more convenient."

Zelnick is correct, mostly, that digital distribution is more convenient, as long as you have access to the necessary online infrastructure—which is to say, internet that doesn't suck. Certainly the world is better on that front than it was 20 years ago, but there are just as certainly still people for whom downloading tens or hundreds of gigabytes is absolutely not convenient.

Beyond that, there's also the ineffable magic of game boxes, and the way they make games "real" in ways that downloading from Steam or GOG simply cannot duplicate. Some of us just love those big dumb game boxes that eat up so much space on shelves, and a not-insignificant sense of the excitement around gaming is lost when everything is reduced to an intangible clot of data.

All of that is without getting into the whole question of "ownership," and I'm sorry to say it but for as mad as we all got at that guy from Ubisoft who said we need to get comfortable with the idea of not owning our games, he was right.

Anyway, none of that represents the mainstream gaming audience, and there's no uncrossing this particular Rubicon. But Zelnick said the embrace of digital doesn't mean Take-Two is abandoning physical releases completely: Comparing it to the persistence of vinyl in the music business, he said that Take-Two will likely put out physical editions of games "now and then." But, he continued, "in other instances, it just won't make sense."

Zelnick isn't the only one in the industry who thinks the move away from game discs on consoles won't ultimately be a big deal. Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said in July that "there are pluses and minuses, but we think it will not disturb the industry too much," while industry analyst Daniel Ahmad more directly echoed Zelnick's point, saying "the truth is that the console ecosystem is nearly entirely digital at this point" anyway.

Grand Theft Auto 6, for the record, remains set for release on November 19, on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. A PC version still hasn't been announced.

After years of speculation, after reams of fan theories and screenshot analysis, we'll be finally getting a full look at Grand Theft Auto 6 on… hold on, Netflix? Really? Right, okay, sure.

This news comes courtesy of the site itself, which has a preview page that reads: "Coming August 27: See an extended look at Grand Theft Auto 6, the next evolution in the groundbreaking Grand Theft Auto series." It's given the tags of "crime films" and "action adventure films". Which is technically true for a documentary about Grand Theft Auto 6, I guess—but very much not true of the game itself. Because it's a videogame, and not a film.

The first look will nonetheless be debuting, as mentioned above, on August 27 at 3 pm EST/8 pm BST. It'll also be coming to YouTube, but six hours later, meaning Netflix has swung a six-hour exclusivity deal with Rockstar for the purposes of, I assume, getting people to pay for Netflix subscriptions.

And hey, from a business perspective? Bully for Netflix, good for them! This is sure to get at least a little pocket change in the coffers of a subscription service that's grown a little less popular thanks to all the advertisements and, er, AI advertisements.

These kinds of deals will almost certainly work slightly better than Netflix's other attempts to get a slice of the videogame pie, given it took one of its games down after just half a year and closed its AAA development studio in 2024 in order to make AI games with a new head of operations, who, er, exited around four months later.

Basically, offering exclusive streaming options to key-jangle people into paying for a month of Netflix subscription seems like an altogether more sensible proposition than an Amazon-esque hubris, believing you can do videogames just because you do movies and TV good and have a lot of money to throw around.

And, hey—if you're excited about GTA 6, you'll finally get to see it! Yipee! You just might have to take a six-hour nap unless you've got a few bucks in your pocket, or if you happen to already have an active subscription going.

Take-Two Interactive, publisher of Grand Theft Auto 6, will hold its Q1 FY2027 results call on Friday, August 7, and I don't mean to sound alarmist or over-excited but I think something might be happening. Allow me to explain.

Part of my job involves listening in to quarterly investor calls, in case anything interesting is revealed about current or upcoming projects—you never know when a CEO is going to accidentally leak a release target or confirm The Witcher 4. So naturally, it behooves me to know when these calls are happening.

US-based publishers generally hold their calls late in the afternoon in the Eastern time zone, typically 4 or 4:30 pm, and Take-Two is no exception: Results drop at 4, get on the phone at 4:30, and that's your day done. But this upcoming investors call is scheduled for 8 am ET—that's 8.5 hours earlier this T2's usual call time.

The obvious question is, why? Take-Two head of global corporate communications Alan Lewis tells me it's "just scheduling." It may well be "just scheduling," but with the biggest videogame in years now just a few months away from its scheduled release—Grand Theft Auto 6 is set to launch, for consoles, on November 19—oddities like this naturally draw extra scrutiny.

Of course, if there is a big secret GTA 6 announcement inbound, Take-Two wouldn't tell me about it, but I persevere nonetheless. So in the event that we are in for GTA news, I see two possibilities.

One, a delay: GTA 6 marketing was meant to kick into gear this summer, but here we are in August—just three months from launch—and we've had nary a peep. Weird, right? This week's investors call is the last with any meaningful space between it and GTA 6 day, so if Take-Two is hitting the brakes and wants to mollify investors with an urgency, this is the time to do it.

Possibility two: Early August is mid-summer, which means we're still well within that promised marketing window. Rolling into an investors call with the biggest game trailer to come along in years would be a baller move, and set the company up to absolutely bulldoze the holiday quarter. Which it's going to do anyway, assuming taht first possibility isn't correct, but sometimes it's fun to let 'em know you're coming.

Neither of those theories explain why Take-Two is holding its investors call at 8 am, but consider this: I dug through T2's quarterly earnings calendar all the way back to the start of 2020, and do you know how often it's held investor calls on a Friday? Never! So there you go, right?

For the record, I think a Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer drop is far more likely than a delay, but a last-minute postponement doesn't strike me as beyond the realm of possibility either. Yes, there's also the chance that this is indeed "just scheduling," I suppose, but that's not very exciting—nor does it answer the underlying question of why?

Whatever the reason, we'll be watching, and we'll let you know what happens when—if—it happens.

Every few years or so I find myself idly wondering whatever happened to Midnight Club, Rockstar's arcade street racing series. I quite liked Midnight Club 2 back in the day, although I fell away from the series after that because, in fine Rockstar fashion, subsequent games weren't released on PC. The series as a whole ground to a halt in 2008 with Midnight Club: Los Angeles—despite going over well with critics, the series was never heard from again.

In a new interview with Kiwi Talkz on Insider Gaming, former Rockstar designer Kris Roberts, who worked on multiple Midnight Club games and Red Dead Redemption before leaving in 2010, said there were a few factors involved in the decision to kill the series, including missed deadlines and "non-trivial conflict" between Rockstar New York and the San Diego studio where Midnight Club was developed, but the obvious elephant in the room was Grand Theft Auto.

"The perception was we never got the accolades or the reception," Roberts said. "The New York perspective was, 'You’re not GTA.' When you’re the red-headed stepchild project—you know, we’re doing a good job, we’re world-class, but we’re still treated less than. It was challenging."

Roberts said the San Diego studio was working on a new Midnight Club when he departed, but it was subsequently cancelled: "It was pretty clear that there would be no more Midnight Club and everything was going to be GTA and stuff moving forward, and that’s just the way it was going to be."

Which sucks, because Midnight Club was pretty great (apart from the whole console-exclusivity thing), but also isn't at all hard to believe. Midnight Club: LA arrived in 2008, the same year Grand Theft Auto 4 came out, and if there was any doubt prior to that about where Rockstar's future lay, GTA 4 ended it.

The ending of Midnight Club also fits with the broader approach of Rockstar parent Take-Two Interactive, which makes no bones about only being interested in major hits: When the company unloaded Private Division in 2024, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said, "Our job really is to focus on making the biggest and best hits in the marketplace. We're not the long tail company. We are top-ten hit makers around here." In an environment like that, being "good" often just isn't going to be good enough.

I still remember the long ritual of installing World of Warcraft to my parents' laptop as a young'un, mystified by the sheer number of discs it took to squeeze the game onto a hard drive.

The more discs a game took to install, the better it must be, I figured—child me would be aghast at the contemporary world, where game boxes come with mere codes inside and PlayStation is killing off disc production. That last factoid has triggered commentary all over the industry and beyond, with everyone from Ubisoft's Yves Guillemot and French politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon weighing in.

Speaking to IGN, Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser gave his own commentary on the physical vs. digital debate with a multifaceted answer. "I don't know that I care. If people want that, I think companies should provide it," he said.

"But I don't know that I personally care. And I also think the ability to update games, as critical as people are of digital releases, the ability to update and fix problems in games has been really useful for the quality of games." Notably, both physical and downloadable patches existed before digital distribution became the rule. Magazines like the superlative PC Gamer would even help distribute them!

Grand Theft Auto writer Jeffrey Crawford "Lazlow" Jones, who was with Houser for the interview, weighed in as well. "I mean, we all have that sort of feeling of when you get that copy and you put the disc on the console, but I also have to say, I really like being at the airport and going, 'oh cool, I can download some quick games to my Steam Deck for this 12-hour flight."

Jones went on to talk about how tangibility still has its perks even as a creator: "[It's] just really fulfilling to have a physical thing you can say, 'Look, we made a thing.'" Houser followed up, "I love physical media. I think everyone does, you know." It's worth noting that Grand Theft Auto 6 will be both a digital-only game and console-exclusive at launch.

We're in the endgame now for Grand Theft Auto 6, and with just 139 days to go players are beginning to scrimp and save for its anticipated release—if they haven't pre-ordered the standard or controversial ultimate edition already. We've seen some resourceful players utilise Bing and Microsoft Rewards to get an impressive discount, but that's not the only way you can get some dollars off the price.

Another fortunate gamer managed to save $77.87 for their pre-order, cutting the price of GTA 6's standard edition from $79.99 down to just $2.12, all thanks to cash back on Best Buy.

"Upgraded to the PS5 Pro a few months ago just to make sure my setup was ready for launch," tangyredapple explains. "Totally forgot I used my Best Buy card for the console and racked up a ton of cash back from it.

"I checked my account today when the pre-orders went live, stacked my reward certificates with a 10% off coupon, and walked away paying less than three bucks for the game. Just a heads up to check your Best Buy reward points or other cash back! If you bought a console recently to prep for the game, you might basically have this paid for already. See y'all in Vice City."

For those who are curious as to why they didn't splurge out the extra $20 for the ultimate edition, physical pre-orders (sans the disc, rip) are only available for the standard edition. But you can subsequently pay for the upgrade after the fact.

These kinds of money saving tricks may sound fairly obvious, but it clearly pays to pay attention and check out discounts wherever possible. GTA 6 isn't as expensive as I thought it would be, although that's a low bar, but it's still a hefty price if you want to be able to access all the content there is. So my advice would be to check out Microsoft Rewards, use Bing (I know, I'm sorry), and keep an eye out for any other way you could get some money off, every little helps.

Rockstar's a big company—and while we're excited for Grand Theft Auto 6, that doesn't sideline the studio's potential for cruddiness. Both from a consumer-facing point of view (like GTA 6 being fully digital) or an employee-facing one, with union-busting allegations in the UK still ongoing.

It looks like, even outside of that dispute, there are still problems. Union members who aren't embroiled in the current legal quagmire spoke to GameDeveloper about their experience with the studio, and it's not looking particularly solid there, either.

The developers, which the report states "chose to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal"—already a bad sign—go into a trio of problems with the company that's making things difficult. Namely bonuses, gender pay gaps, and crunch.

Firstly, that the lack of transparency around those bonuses makes it a useful carrot on the stick for leadership—and a mental nightmare of invisible chess for employees, given they've got no idea whether their bonuses will be good or not, or what even goes into one:

"The reasoning given for this is often nebulous," GameDeveloper is told, "Inconsistent between departments, even inconsistent between team members within the same department, and sometimes hinges on completely subjective or retroactive criticisms.

"They are under no obligation to show their working. Employees want good pay, and if literally anything they do that year could affect it, they will naturally feel they have to be as pliable as possible to their boss's whims."

The report also states that initiatives to address gender pay gaps were scrapped, and that night workers were no longer given extra compensation for their hours. It doesn't help that there's still reportedly an attempt to normalise crunch within the company.

In the UK, labour laws have a baked-in maximum working time of 48 hours a week unless workers opt-out. These employees claim that not only had Rockstar baked in that opting-out into their contracts, but that the steps towards opting back into the regulations (which every employee has a right to do) were obfuscated by the company, requiring a union campaign to inform them they had the choice.

"The union successfully ran a campaign to inform people they could opt back in to the regulations at any time, which resulted in Rockstar management simplifying the process and removing the obligation to meet with HR.

"Part of the problem with crunch is that there is not an agreed definition, and now it seems the company thinks that offering specific and limited compensation as an incentive for overtime means it no longer qualifies as crunch."

The employees claim, also, that this crunch is applied inconsistently across teams, with some who "seem to never get out of it—and often colleagues do not realize the opposite group exists".

Take-Two's response to GameDeveloper's request for comment is mostly boilerplate corporate stuff, but it's only fair I include it here, too: "We strive to make the best games possible by giving our talented teams world-class work environments and ongoing career opportunities. We have fostered a culture which is focused on teamwork, excellence, and kindness, and where we support and reward the team across all levels of the business through competitive compensation and benefits policies.

"We are proud that as a result, our employee retention is well above the industry standard. We have received a request from a union seeking to discuss voluntary recognition. We value an open and constructive dialogue with all stakeholders and will arrange to meet."

And hey, at least Take-Two's meeting with them—a low bar, but it's at least being crawled over. It might be that Rockstar's deciding not to get in hot water again while it's still legally tangled in another union-busting accusation.

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.

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.

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.

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—which you would be forgiven for thinking is a videogame, but is actually a civilisational event on par with man's exile from Eden—got a big infodump today, ahead of its preorders kicking off. One smidge of that infodump? A treasure trove of new screenshots to market the game's pricier Ultimate Edition, showing off Vice City, protagonists Jason Duval and Lucia Caminos, and a lot of guns 'n' cars.

Obviously, you would like to look at them, and I am nothing if not a servant of your will. So here are all the new screenshots Rockstar has published from GTA 6, divided conveniently by content.

Jason and Lucia

I'll be honest, I find these shots the most exciting. Ever since GTA 4, I've mourned the robust customisation options Rockstar gave us for CJ in GTA: San Andreas. Sure, GTA 5 had a suite of options, but I never felt like Michael, Franklin, or Trevor could get as varied as CJ could back in the day. Here, though? Jason and Lucia can look really dang different, aided in no small part by just how impressive Rockstar's graphics tech has gotten in the 13 years since GTA 5's release.

Guns guns guns

Looks like GTA 6 expands a whole bunch of GTA 5's relatively paltry gun cosmetics, taking a leaf out of Red Dead Redemption 2's book to let you style your weapons of war in all manner of ways. Including putting your names on them. Which seems like a bad thing to do. As a criminal.

Cars

Yes, Rockstar still likes cars a whole bunch, and I must admit they do look very good as they lounge in Vice City's sunset and neon. These are Ultimate Edition screens, remember—small temptations to get you to fork over $100 for the game's rich-guy edition, so if you want to get your hands on a lot of these wheels in particular, be prepared to pay for it.

Stores of Vice City

One of Rockstar's more egregious moves with its preorder campaign is that there are a few fancy customisation shops—tattoo parlours, vehicle mod joints—that will be straight-up closed if you don't have the (more) expensive edition. They do look nice though. Vice City's petit-bourgeoisie look like a classic rogue's gallery of Rockstar freaks and weirdos.

Boats

Florida, remarkably, is surrounded by water, and it sure looks like you'll be spending a lot of your time on the surf as you do your various crimes. My favourite part: that's a damn dolphin, no doubt rendered with Rockstar's classically unhinged attention to detail.

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.

"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!

For reasons I can't quite explain—except to admit that San Andreas was very good—the entire Earth has become one big millenarian cult awaiting the arrival of Grand Theft Auto 6, which will purge us of our sins and deliver us to apocatastasis. It will also make four hundred quintillion dollars.

No wonder, then, that its current November 2026 release date squats on the calendar like a big criminal troll, warding off any who come near. No studio wants to release in the vicinity of GTA 6, leading to a very lopsided 2026 release calendar in which every game has tried to squeeze itself into September. Well, every game but one.

"Maybe not *every* publisher," wrote Furyu Games in a post on X, responding to a Kotaku story titled "Sony’s State Of Play Showed That Every Publisher Is Terrified Of GTA 6". Furyu declared, boldly, like its upcoming roguelike Crymelight is due out November 5, two weeks prior to GTA 6's launch (and concurrent with Guy Fawkes Night; he would've been a fan). "Maybe we’re just not afraid enough".

Furyu has form for this sort of thing, as the studio itself notes: "Last year, [Furyu-published] Kemono Teatime launched on September 4... the same day as Hollow Knight: Silksong."

Which is, let's be absolutely clear here, very much a marketing manoeuvre. Being the plucky little studio that picks a David-and-Goliath fight with Rockstar is an arresting image, so arresting that Devolver Digital has made hay doing much the same thing—even moving the release date of an upcoming mystery game in order to make sure it releases on the exact same day as GTA 6.

But it's still pretty funny, if you ask me, and I suspect it's a good move for a smaller publisher whose games don't have GTA 6 levels of hype. Sure, releasing some big AAA thing the same month as "the largest game launch in history" won't do you any favours, but putting out a smaller game? Some of that GTA 6 aura might just rub off on you.

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 developer Rockstar fired 31 employees in October 2025, allegedly—according to the terminated employees—because they were trying to form a union. Rockstar denied those allegations, however, and said the employees were terminated because they revealed "specific game features from upcoming and unannounced titles" in "a public forum."

Legal action was filed against Rockstar over the firings, and that matter is still working its way through the system. But one outcome has been reached: Rockstar workers have formed a union.

The Rockstar Game Workers Union (via Game Developer) is a part of the Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain, the union that's been leading the effort against Rockstar on behalf of the employees who were fired in 2025. The union was announced with a play on gamers' longstanding desire for the next Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer: "The video GTA fans have been waiting for."

GTA fans have been on the edge of their seats at the rumours a new video is about to drop…Well the wait is over.We present: the public launch of the Rockstar IWGB Game Workers Union.Our platform, to tell our story.youtu.be/iLOq_6rOpoM

— @rsgworkersunion.bsky.social (@rsgworkersunion.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-05-28T22:29:04.668Z

Instead of a videogame trailer, though, the video recaps the events of the past seven months, from the dismissal of 31 employees last year through protests at Rockstar offices, a commitment from the UK government to investigate the matter, and the legal action filed by the IWGB. And, the union says, rather than impeding unionization efforts, Rockstar's actions only catalyzed them.

"We are now bigger and stronger than ever with more and more workers joining from across every one of Rockstar's sites in Edinburgh, London, Leeds, Lincoln, and Dundee," the narrator states. "Together, we are organizing around the things we want to change, starting with pay transparency, flexible working, and an end to crunch."

The union is also raising funds to pay for its legal case against Rockstar: "We're determined to win justice for the 31 fired workers and to show studios like Rockstar that they cannot get away with this disgusting treatment of the people whose talent, skill, and creativity are what capture their audiences and generate their billions."

Rockstar does indeed expect to earn billions on Grand Theft Auto 6: Parent company Take-Two Interactive said last week that it expects revenues for its 2027 fiscal year to surpass $8 billion, a year-over-year increase of more than $1 billion powered by the console release of GTA 6 on November 19. We're still waiting for official word on a PC version.

I've reached out to Rockstar for comment on the new union and will update after I receive a reply.

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."

It is rare that I sit down and write one of these 'CEO has spoken' articles with a charitable mind, mostly because I have this irritating habit of punching up, but also because they are, typically, a little divorced from reality. Like the head of Amazon Games saying videogames don't really have voice acting, or Microsoft's Satya Nadella trying to retroactively justify AI for the nth time.

Which is why I have to come forward and say that Take-Two CEO, Strauss Zelnick, has been extremely reasonable in a recent interview with IGN. When asked whether or not Red Dead Online is considered a missed opportunity—and it has, admittedly, been less of a breadwinner for the publisher than GTA Online—he had this to say:

"So let me be clear. There is literally nothing about Red Dead selling 85 million units that could signal a missed opportunity. And Red Dead Online has been immensely successful and long lasting."

Furthermore, Zelnick adds, even if GTA Online didn't exist, producing one of the other most successful open-world videogame franchises out there would also be absolutely fine: "I think if we didn't have Grand Theft Auto here at our company, then people would just talk about the fact that we have this massive franchise in Red Dead.

"I actually personally think Red Dead is just amazing and I love engaging with it. And I think the reason it continues to sell is that it's just spectacular entertainment. It's beautiful and it feels very up to date despite the fact that it's not a new title."

As to whether or not Red Dead Online is a little underserved from a player perspective, well—that's another thing entirely. I'm not partial to Rockstar's online games myself, but the PC Gaming Show's own Joe Donelly noted last year that "despite its scope to match the ambition of GTA Online once upon a time, RDO instead persists in the lurching shadow of its modern day cousin."

But that's a bit different from the business-related implication that Red Dead Online is somehow a missed opportunity. I'd argue selling 85 million copies of anything is good enough, even if you never updated its online component ever again.

And while I've got sympathies for RDO's doubtless passionate playerbase, I'm not sure every game with an online slice needs to be a perpetually-maintained live service mill. I even kind of miss the day where superfluous multiplayer modes would come and go—but hey, I'm a games journalist, and my live service fatigue doesn't speak for cowboys, cowgirls, and horse girls everywhere.

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.

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.

Tech CEOs and other Silicon Valley sickos like to present AI as a gift that levels the playing field, making activities accessible to those who'd previously never have been able to rise to the occasion. But what if I told you that making things easier and making things accessible aren't always the same thing.

I could tell you that while vibe coding may raise productivity, it rarely ends in a higher quality product, and just because a dog can now make videogames it doesn't mean anyone has any more chance of creating the next hit game as they did years ago before AI. The tools have been around for a while, but the defining factor is whether people have the time, effort, and passion to put them to use.

But instead of warbling on for the rest of this article I'll just hand it over to Take-Two Interactive's CEO Strauss Zelnick, who recently discussed, during a podcast with David Senra, the myths around AI and the ways in which devs can use this technology in a way which is helpful.

"That was the thesis, that with AI anyone can make a videogame," Zelnick says. "Anyone could make a videogame last week, anyone could make a videogame five years ago, the technology is readily available. You know how many mobile games get released a year? Thousands. You know how many hits get made a year? Zero to five. You know who makes them? Thank you very much, we do.

"You don't need this new technology to make assets, that already exists, it will be quicker to do it. But speed isn't the issue. The technology, prior to AI, existed to clone GTA, but it won't be GTA. It'd be a clone of GTA; clones don't sell. All hits are by their very nature unexpected. That's the most important thing to take away. Things that are data-driven in their entirety can't be unexpected, but that doesn't mean that AI isn't super helpful."

The crux of the issue is that for a videogame to be a hit it has to offer up a new experience. But "datasets by their very nature are backward looking, creativity by its very nature is forward looking". New ideas can be based on existing data, which is where datasets can help inform new ideas, but there needs to be at least one element that does something different to everything else, otherwise there's no incentive for players to try it out. Think of games like Palworld, Marvel Rivals, or even Arc Raiders—these games took an existing idea and added something new to it.

"I would love to say that AI will make it easier, quicker, and better to make hits because who would benefit more than we," Zelnick adds. "We're in the business already, we own IP." But the issue still stands that AI creates "derivative property" and that's simply not as compelling. "AI is really great at asset creation but hit creation isn't asset creation, asset creation is a necessary but insufficient condition for hit creation." So no, the next hit videogame won't come from the hallucinations of an LLM, it's reserved for the hallucinations of some tired dev.

It's hard to imagine Borderlands without all the stylized ink lines and butt stallions, but when the game was first teased nearly two decades ago, it looked much greyer and more brooding—the sort of thing you'd expect from a shooter released in the late aughts. CEO of publisher Take-Two, Strauss Zelnick, said in a recent interview with podcaster David Senra that the game's final look took a big overhaul that cost $50 million dollars and an extra year of development time.

"We had not turned around the company yet, we had very limited capital, and we were developing a game that was about to be released two months later, which is to say it's done. I mean, we had spent a lot of money," he said in the interview. "The head of the division came into my office and said, 'Look, we just don't think this is good enough and we think we screwed up, and the art style is not appropriate and it's not differentiated, we want to remake the game.'"

While it was a costly risk for Take-Two, Zelnick said he "dug in and did my homework" and ended up supporting the decision, though he noted it was "non-obvious … no one else in the business would have done it."

It's hard to know what factors Zelnick is considering when he claims the delay came with a $50 million price tag, but it's especially surprising to hear given that Borderlands 2 had a budget of around $35 million according to an estimate by Randy Pitchford from back in the day.

I admit I'm curious to know how that original, moody take on Borderlands might have felt in a full game—I was never that sour on beige classics like Quake and Gears of War—but the team's instinct that it was hurting the game was probably right, given that early testers thought the game looked an awful lot like id Software's Rage or Fallout 3 (as you can read about in former PC Gamer EIC Samuel Roberts's full story on the way Gearbox's shooter almost looked). Rage and even Fallout 3 look a bit dated and indistinct now that we can view the dominance of muddy brown shooters in retrospect—love or hate Borderlands, it certainly has a style all its own.

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.

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.

Cast your mind back to October 2024 and you may remember the time when Russia fined Google a website-breaking amount of money. Like grains of rice on a chessboard, a fine Russia levied against Google for blocking some pro-Kremlin channels had compounded to the point that Google 'owed' the country ₽2 undecillion. That's a two followed by 36 zeroes. That amount was later capped at a more generous ₽91.5 quintillion but, either way, it's more money than there is on Earth.

Which I suspect, as a tactic, was not much of a winner, as Russian courts have turned around and asked for a much more payable fine from EA, Take-Two, Battlestate, and NetEase (via Kommersant) for failing to localise the data of Russian gamers on domestic servers.

Law firm Semenov and Pevzner told Kommersant that Russia's media regulator, Roskomnadzor, had filed lawsuits resulting in ₽2 million fines against the four companies, while three remaining lawsuits against Embracer Group, Digital Extremes, and Epic Games are yet to reach a conclusion.

Which is not a lot. At the time of writing, ₽2 million is about $27,000. If the court were to impose the maximum allowable fine against the three remaining companies—₽6 million—that would be just over $80,000.

That's couch-cushion money for companies at this scale, whose revenues are measured in the billions. In the unlikely event any of them were to pay, it would be tantamount to a rounding error on their balance sheets.

Perhaps this indicates that the fines themselves are not the point. A source spoken to by Kommersant suggests that the lawsuits are merely the beginning of a crackdown on foreign-made online games within Russia, a move which would likely redound at least somewhat to the benefit of homegrown games. For its part, Roskomnadzor says it has no such plans, but it would fit the country's previously documented attempts at "digital sovereignty".

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.

2K Games studio 31^st Union has confirmed the layoff of an undisclosed number of employees, first reported by GamesIndustry, as it continues to develop Project Ethos, the free-to-play hero shooter announced in 2024.

In a memo sent to 31^st Union employees and shared with PC Gamer, 31^st Union studio head Ben Brinkman, who left Respawn to take the role in October 2025, said "it's become clear that changes need to be made to our team in order to realize our goals and deliver this experience for players."

"Our success is dependent on our ability to work more quickly and nimbly," Brinkman wrote. "To do that, we've made the difficult decision to scale back our team to better align with where we are in development, which unfortunately means parting ways with some valued colleagues today."

It also sounds like Project Ethos itself is undergoing at least a minor change in direction. It was revealed to the world in October 2024 as a "roguelike hero shooter," although as PC Gamer editor Tyler Wilde noted at the time, "it's not really a roguelike: You just get to pick from randomized sets of buffs throughout a match. Otherwise, it's a third-person shooter that resembles Fortnite, but with hero characters who come with unique guns and abilities, and a low-stakes PvPvE extraction mode as its main attraction."

Brinkman, however, described it in somewhat vaguer terms in his layoff message, saying 31^st Union "is committed to building a bold new game with a renewed direction and vision—a skill-based PVP roguelike experience that will challenge and thrill players." He added that the studio has "evolved as a team this past year in what has been a defining period of creative growth."

That doesn't necessarily mean anything, but I do have to wonder whether 2K has decided that Fortnite-styled extraction/hero shooters are a riskier bet than it seemed a couple years ago. For every Arc Raiders, there's a Highguard (and plenty of others), and not even heavyweights like Bungie are immune from the risks of wading into a genre already dominated by a few major hits: Marathon is a brilliant shooter but it's running one-tenth of Arc Raiders' player counts on Steam, and Sony took an absolute hammering on it.

But it's also notable that this isn't the first time that Project Ethos has shown signs of trouble. Original 31^st Union studio head Michael Condrey was reportedly given the boot just four months after the game was announced, when that reveal—which came just over a month after the disastrous end of Concord, another live service shooter casualty—failed to make much of a splash. And that, as far as I know, was the last we heard of Project Ethos until these layoffs.

The cuts at 31^st Union seem not unlike layoffs made in 2025 at 2K Games studio Cloud Chamber, which is currently working on a new BioShock game. Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick recently said he is "deeply disappointed" that it's taking so long to release a new game in the series, adding that "finding the right creative purchase" on the project has been more difficult than expected—something that sounds like might also apply to 31^st Union and Project Ethos.

Despite everything, Brinkman said he's "never been more confident in the future of our game, this team, and the commitment and investment Take-Two and 2K leadership continue to show."