Rockstar published their statement on Twitter: “Our work on the next Grand Theft Auto game will continue as planned and remain as committed as ever to delivering an experience to you, our players, that truly exceeds your expectations,” the statement said. Rockstar said there’d be an official update on the game’s progress “soon”, and that they’d release details of the game “when it is ready”. As Katharine reported over the weekend, footage from GTA 6 appeared online and began to spread early on Sunday. Rockstar’s statement confirmed that the footage was obtained through a “network intrusion” that enabled someone to download information about the game, including “early development footage”. The company said they didn’t believe that there’d be any knock-on effects from the hack on ongoing development of their projects, nor on its live-service games. Other than this leaked early footage, there isn’t a lot to go on about the next GTA. The game was only formally acknowledged to be in development at Rockstar in February this year. Not getting too excited about huge games in development for years that are nowhere near ready to be shown off or released means that the developers might not be compelled to, you know, crunch and ruin their personal lives. Rockstar received some deserved flak in 2018 for then-boss Dan Houser saying staff had worked 100-hour weeks. That culture seems to be showing signs of changing, according to reports from back in July. Why discourage that? Grand Theft Auto 6 doesn’t have a release window yet. If that changes then I’ll let you know, but don’t expect to play it for at least another two years. In the meantime, there’s always GTA Online as part of GTA V on Steam and the Epic Games Store.
