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After waiting for a decade since the release of Grand Theft Auto 5 (GTA 5), numerous fans of the franchise finally received the trailer for the next entry in the series this month. This upcoming title has been the subject of numerous speculations and leaks over the years and the trailer has confirmed quite a few of them, including the ones about Vice City being the setting and the game also featuring a male and a female protagonist. We also got to see a release date slated for 2025 which has got many fans wondering about the actual duration of development for GTA 6, as it has already been a decade since the launch of the previous title. Let’s delve into it.
Grand Theft Auto 6’s Development Period
Taking a look at Rockstar’s previous Grand Theft Auto games, we can notice one pattern where the development of the next entry starts right after the release of the outgoing game. For example, Grand Theft Auto 4 reportedly started development in 2004, right after the release of GTA San Andreas, while GTA 5 began development in 2008, following the release of Grand Theft Auto 4.
Although it has been over a decade since the launch of Grand Theft Auto 5, GTA 6 supposedly started its development in a similar fashion, that being a short while after the release of the previous game. While many reports surfaced saying that GTA 6’s development began in 2014, it merely indicates that brainstorming and other initial stages of development have started and it does not mean that the game has entered full-fledged production.
Considering that Rockstar was working on GTA 5’s online mode at that time, while also developing its PC port, coupled with the fact that they also had to allot resources towards the production of Read Dead Redemption 2, it seems unlikely that the developers were fully focused on the next GTA.
Upon taking a look at the LinkedIn profile of Jon Young, a former Rockstar Video Editor who worked on numerous projects for the studio, we can possibly conclude that full-on development of GTA 6 started sometime around 2015. This is because Young has been part of Rockstar since 2005 and has seemingly worked on the upcoming game from 2015 until May 2018 when he left the studio.
Taking a look at Young’s job description while at Rockstar, we can see that his work revolved around covering content for various departments in the studio. This means the video editor was involved in the company’s projects from the pre-production stages from location shoots to covering all media for the games. This further backs up our claim that the game indeed began development in 2015, possibly after the release of GTA 5’s PC port.
