GTA 6 release date, news and rumours – EVERYTHING we know so far

EIGHT years on from Grand Theft Auto V, fans are still waiting for developer Rockstar to announce the next instalment in the franchise.

So far, the US developer hasn’t made a peep about the project, leaving gamers to feed off scraps of information from leaks and rumours.

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Grand Theft Auto V came out eight years ago

GTA 6 – what is it?

Grand Theft Auto 6 is the rumoured latest entry to the hugely popular GTA franchise developed by US gaming giant Rockstar.

Like its predecessors, the game will almost certainly see players act out their criminal fantasies as a member of the murky underworld of a US city.

Grand Theft Auto V (GTA:V) came out eight years ago, so gamers are desperate for a new entry to the series.

But Rockstar is playing its cards close to its chest, keeping details of the yet-to-be-announced title a secret.

HandoutGTA 6 has reportedly been in development for years[/caption]

As such, we don’t know anything concrete yet. Rockstar hasn’t even admitted GTA 6 exists yet, but it’s safe to assume it’s in the works.

GTA:V has sold more than 90million copies and made an estimated £5billion since its 2013 release.

It’s still incredibly popular, with thousands of players flocking to its multiplayer mode, GTA Online, every month.

GTA 6 – release date

GTA fans may have a long wait ahead of them before the release of the blockbuster gaming franchise’s next entry.

The hotly-anticipated GTA 6 might not hit shelves until 2025, according to one rumour, in what would be a huge blow to impatient fans worldwide.

A steady stream of rumours and leaks about the franchise’s next entry have hinted at a 2022 or 2023 release date.

However, according to YouTuber and prominent leaker Tom Henderson, fans may have even longer to wait.

HandoutGTA 5 came out nearly eight years ago[/caption]

In a June 27 upload, he claimed that we may not see GTA VI “until 2024-2025.”

“If you’re expecting to play this game in the next couple of years I would put your expectations in check,” Henderson said.

Multiple factors have contributed to the game’s delay, the influencer told his 102,000 YouTube subscribers.

Rockstar is making efforts to address its “crunch culture”, for instance, with more of a focus on employee wellbeing.

An alleged GTA 6 campaign map recently leaked online

The firm came under fire following the release of both GTA:V and 2018’s Red Dead Redemption 2 after workers reported working overtime for months on end in the lead up to release.

Rockstar is aiming to “avoid very harsh hours” throughout the development of GTA VI, according to Henderson.

The leaker also said that the next GTA “is going to release solely on current-gen consoles and PC.”

“It is not going to release on past-generation consoles,” he added. 

HandoutGamers are desperate for a new entry to the GTA series[/caption]

It’s unclear where Tom got his information from, so take it with a pinch of salt for now.

We likely won’t know anything concrete on GTA 6 until Rockstar officially announces the game.

GTA 6 news and rumours

Last year, alleged details about GTA 6 surfaced online.

A purported former employee of Rockstar leaked apparent info about the game, including the names of the main characters.

In it, the anonymous poster claimed the hotly-anticipated game’s map will mirror the one in GTA San Andreas, with three cities and one smaller town.

However, it will apparently be larger than the maps of both GTA:V and Rockstar cowboy shooter Red Dead Redemption 2 (RDR2) combined.

Players will follow four main characters through the game’s story mode, the poster said.

They include a driver called Walther Wallace, a man named Thomas Branigan with a smuggling plane called “the Raven” and a drug dealer named Marcus Burke.

An unnamed former Israeli IDF agenct was also mentioned in the post.

Missions in the game allegedly won’t be as linear as in GTA:V or RDR2.

Gun mechanics and the the hand-to-hand combat system will be more like RDR2’s, the poster claimed.

Apparently, the game will be set in the 1980s but will later jump to modern times – an unusual narrative choice for the franchise.

According to a lengthy post on Reddit the new game is code-named Project Americas, and has been in development in some form since 2012, a year before GTA:V launched.

It’s been on-and-off since then, the post says, first picking up properly in 2015 before being put on ice while all of Rockstar’s global studios focused on the final details of Red Dead Redemption 2.

In other news, we revealed the best games available in 2021 for PS5, Xbox, PC and Nintendo Switch.

A remastered version of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2’s Multiplayer mode could be coming out this year.

And, Dell’s Alienware R10 Ryzen Edition is a gaming PC powerhouse that crushes both the new consoles.

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