Latest GTA 6 hint suggests the game has been in development for nearly 10 years

It's shocking that we still know so little about the game.

Official art of Trevor, one of GTA 5 protagonists, holding a lighter. Trevor is white, his hair is getting bald, and he wears a white T-shirt.
Image via Rockstar Games

A LinkedIn profile of a former Rockstar Games employee caused a stir in the Grand Theft Auto community on Aug. 10, suggesting that GTA 6 has been in development for nearly a decade.

Recommended Videos

This former Rockstar employee is a lead video editor called Jon Young. His LinkedIn profile states that he worked in numerous Rockstar titles, but what caught the eye of the community is the fact that Young says he worked on GTA 6 between 2015 and 2018—meaning that the game could have been in development for almost 10 years.

The screenshot shows information of a former Rockstar Games employee: what he did at Rockstar and in what games he worked
Why do we still not know a lot about GTA 6 if it is being developed for so long? Screenshot by Dot Esports

Fans have been speculating when Rockstar will release the next entry in the GTA franchise for years now, especially because GTA 5 came out so long ago. Rockstar confirmed in February 2022 that the next GTA game is “well underway” and fans were finally able to see a glimpse of this work on September 2022 after concept art and gameplay footage were leaked.

Rockstar, though, never said when it first started developing GTA 6. It it’s possible that the game started development just a year or two after the release of GTA 5 in 2013.

It’s clear that Rockstar takes time to develop its games nowadays, though. Red Dead Redemption 2 was the company’s last big game and its development took over eight years, with Rockstar working on it not long after the first Red Dead Redemption was released in 2010.

Although a lot of players, myself included, can’t wait to get more details on GTA 6, it’s not likely that we’ll get that from Rockstar anytime soon. We hoped that Rockstar would release GTA 6 in 2023, 10 years after GTA 5‘s release, but that would be truly shocking at this point. All that we can realistically hope is that Rockstar produces a trailer before the year wraps.

Author
Image of Leonardo Biazzi
Leonardo Biazzi
Staff writer and CS:GO lead. Leonardo has been passionate about games since he was a kid and graduated in Journalism in 2018. Before Leonardo joined Dot Esports in 2019, he worked for Brazilian outlet Globo Esporte. Leonardo also worked for HLTV.org between 2020 and 2021 as a senior writer, until he returned to Dot Esports and became part of the staff team.