The gaming rumor mill has been spinning once again, this time of tales of GTA 6 being delayed. Information on this remains unverified but comes from a reliable source, a former Rockstar game developer.

In speaking with IGN, the anonymous dev stated he had no inside information, but looking at Rockstars’ previous record on GTA releases, he had confidence that the game would eventually be delayed from 2025 to 2026. he further noted that GTA 4 had been delayed four months before its original release date, a similar pushback applied to GTA V.

The dev noted that the delay might not be something gamers would enjoy. However, he insisted if a delay were to occur, it would be for the betterment of GTA 6. As he notes, ‘GTA 6 will sell for 10 plus years and there is no competition to worry about. They are not going to release the game until they’re 100% happy with it. No matter what it said in the trailer.’

Better Delayed than Never

Whilst it would be a blow to a community who’s hungrily been chomping at the bit of the sixth entry into the Grand Theft Auto Franchise for over a decade, delaying the game to ensure a better product would ultimately allow the game to release to meet or surpass fan expectations. It has, sadly, not been so with many other game releases where pushing to meet deadlines has resulted in poor quality of product and massive complaints from fans with scathing reviews from critics.

For example, look at the recently released Star Wars: Outlaws. A game that seemed to look great in promotion but quickly showed it met just about the minimum threshold of exceptions from the fanbase. Whilst we reviewed the game quite well, it was notable how stunningly different the quality of Outlaws was when compared to other more recent entries in the franchise such as Jedi: Fallen Order.

Greed over Creed

This isn’t the first game to come out with poor reviews by Ubisoft, though it certainly has impacted the company enough to wisely delay the release of their upcoming Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Frustratingly, the problem doesn’t boil down to work ethic or meeting quotes – it simply comes down to greed. Games that sell for nearly a hundred pounds play like cheap PSP games with massive quality dips, mechanics that feel ancient, and too fetch quests for all the golden retriever gamers in the world combined.

Games Rant has a list of ten games, a small number of a larger many, that were released too early with too little applied to finish the product. It should be said that some of these games have improved since launch. CD Project Red’s Cyberpunk 2077 did a full 180 but only after two years of continuous updates, similarly, was the same for EA’s Star Wars Battlefront 2, which had to pull out all the stop (and remove an element of the micro transaction which was declared as encouraging underage gambling) before the game was considered even half playable.

It’s clear that those developers who make these games and then go on to improve them had good intentions – otherwise, they would have done like the makers of The Lord of The Rings: Gollum or Concord and abandoned the game barely after launch. And when a game does make a turn around, it’s fantastic.

But games should not be released before they are ready and only with the expressive purpose of making money. Games are meant to be fun; they are a form of escapism that allows us to experience whole other exciting realities. They are not ways to exploit gullible idiots into spending thousands on micro-transactions.

That is why a GTA 6 delay if it is announced, should be heralded with joy. Why? Because if Rockstar isn’t ready, it means they care about the gamer experience. Ultimately, that is what every gamer wants. To feels as though the company is making the game just for a bit of profit but because they had a great idea and wanted someone to have fun with it.

GTA 6 is currently slated to release in late 2025.