The Second GTA 6 Delay: The Reasons

No matter how hard the community tries to come up with interesting — and sometimes outright wild — theories about why GTA 6 was delayed yet again, the truth is simple. Besides the factors that were already obvious six months ago, there are others.

In their statement, the developers made it perfectly clear that the only reason was their desire to bring the project to a flawless state — to polish it as much as possible. Rockstar Games has repeatedly said that they are striving for perfection as they work on what is meant to become their new magnum opus.

Several sources report that the game is content complete, and all efforts are now focused on avoiding a repeat of the Cyberpunk 2077 situation — a brilliant title that collapsed at launch due to a staggering number of bugs and an overall lack of refinement. Given the scale that the New York and Edinburgh teams are aiming for, these concerns are justified.

Insider Tom Henderson, confirming the game’s overall completeness, provides concrete figures: every month of delay costs 10 million dollars. This means that with a single decision, the “rock stars” will spend at least 60M.

And that’s not counting the losses from the stock market. According to some calculations, Take-Two is losing more than 3 billion in market cap — 17 million every day. No company in the gaming industry (and perhaps in any industry) can afford that. So why is the rights holder choosing this path? A strong launch could bring in double the losses — around 7B… not to mention the long-term revenue guaranteed by the next iteration of Online.

The idea that the delay is connected to issues involving the union is dismissed not only by Zelnick but also by everyone worth listening to: Kiwi Talkz, Tez2, Jason Schreier, and Henderson himself. Although the two events happened in parallel, one did not influence the other. The firing of thirty people out of six thousand simply cannot be critical. Still, while it may not have affected development immediately, it’s unclear what this story could lead to in the future.

For now, however, November 19, 2026 still looks like a realistic release date for Grand Theft Auto VI.