GTA 6: Next game in Grand Theft Auto series in ‘early stages’ of development seven years after predecessor’s release

Series’ developers Rockstar have been criticised in recent years for cultural issues and employees’ extensive overtime

Grand Theft Auto VI is reportedly in the early phases of development seven years after the release of its predecessor.

Grand Theft Auto V, which sold approximately 120 million copies to become the second highest-selling video game of all time behind Minecraft (180 million sales), was released in September 2013.

Its sequel has been highly anticipated ever since, but the next game is still only in the very early stages of production, according to video game website Kotaku.

The video game publisher behind the series, Rockstar, has been widely criticised in recent years for cultural issues and employees’ extensive overtime on projects, and in an article about the developers’ efforts to move past these matters, Kotaku shed light on the state of the long-awaited Grand Theft Auto VI.

“One plan that management has laid out for the next game, a new entry in the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) series, is to start out with a moderately sized release (which, by Rockstar’s standards, would still be a large game) that is then expanded with regular updates over time, which may help mitigate stress and crunch,” Kontaku’s article reads.

 

“But there’s a catch: Rockstar’s next big project is still early in development.”

One employee at Rockstar, when asked by Kontaku whether they feared more overtime to finish the game, said: “The changes have been good enough for me to stay and give them a chance, but let’s see what happens down the road when the pressures of delivering a final product become reality.”

The GTA series comprises action adventure games with plots taking place in open-world settings – usually in fictional variants of cities in the United States.

British development house Rockstar also makes the hugely popular Red Dead Redemption games.