Rockstar’s newly announced launch date for GTA 6 has led to panicked meetings at other studios, as they try to dodge its blast zone.
You may have already heard, but after originally being slated for autumn 2025, Rockstar has pushed back the launch of GTA 6 to May 26, 2026.
We already knew publishers were trying to avoid the game’s release date, with the likes of Ghost of Yōtei and Marathon now no longer in the firing line, but the delay has reportedly caused a new wave of panic for those that were planning to launch games next year.
In theory, announcing the May date, over a year in advance, should give companies plenty of time to pivot, but uncertainty around whether GTA 6 could be delayed again has led to some ’emergency meetings’.
In a report on Bloomberg, the delay of GTA 6 is likened to a ‘massive game of 4D chess’ which is ‘playing out across the entire video game industry’, as business executives try to assess whether Rockstar ‘will actually finish the game in time’.
According to the report, various unnamed studios working on games slated for autumn 2026 are ‘praying that Rockstar doesn’t slip again’, while others are hoping for the opposite ‘so they have an excuse to delay to 2027 and score more time’.
One developer on a ‘big multiplayer game’ previously delayed their release date from autumn 2025 to spring 2026, a decision partially made to ‘get far away’ from GTA 6. Now, however, it is ‘caught in a vice’ due to the costs of delaying the game for a second time.
During its latest earnings call, EA CEO Andrew Wilson seemed newly positive about the release window for the next Battlefield, in light of GTA 6’s delay. The shooter is set to launch at some point before March 2026, at least two months clear of Rockstar’s juggernaut.
However, others aren’t quite so scared. Publisher Devolver Digital said it is planning to launch a game on the same date as GTA 6, although given the studio’s history it’s unclear if it is just a stunt for internet giggles.
While GTA 6 is inevitably going to suck up attention when it is released, it’s unclear whether it will have detrimental impact on other games releasing around the same time.
When GTA 5 came out on September 17, 2013, FIFA 14 was still released a week later, with Nintendo’s The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD and The Wonderful 101 on the Wii U also out within days of the game.
However, Activision previously released 2018’s Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4 roughly a month earlier than usual to avoid Rockstar’s last game, Red Dead Redemption 2. The latter went onto to become the best-selling game of that year, beating Black Ops 4, so there’s good reason to avoid Rockstar’s blast radius.
The unprecedented success of GTA 5 (210 million copies sold, as of February this year), coupled with a less stable industry than 2013, means GTA 6 will launch in very different circumstances, when compared to its predecessor.
For some within the industry, the impact of GTA 6 doesn’t represent a much-needed boost in general interest, that will be good for everyone, but another ‘forever’ title which will suck away attention from all the other games in the years to come.
In a post on Bluesky, Brandon Sheffield, director at Necrosoft Games, wrote: ‘It’s so strange how people talk like GTA 6 is going to be the shot in the arm that the games industry needs. How does a GTA 6 release benefit any game company other than Rockstar? Trickle down theory doesn’t work. I don’t care if ‘the industry’ makes $6 billion, I care whether a wider variety of games sell.
‘GTA 6 releasing does the opposite of helping the industry in my view – it will become another forever game like Fortnite that draws eyes away from new releases, and becomes one of the only games the general public plays, to the exclusion of all else. Delay it forever as far as I’m concerned!’
As for whether GTA 6 could be pushed back again beyond May 2026, Rockstar has often delayed its games several times before launch. In the past, it has typically launched new games in the second half of the year, but there are some exceptions to the rule, with the original Red Dead Redemption launching in May 2010 and GTA 4 in April 2008.
The delays aren’t unusually as long as a year though, which gives some hope that this will be the only one for GTA 6.
Following the announcement of the delay, Rockstar released the second trailer for GTA 6, which features a wealth of hidden details.
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