New Rumors Hint Where And When ‘GTA 6’ Might Be Set, Possible Release Date Window

Grand Theft Auto V was named as the best-selling video game of the past decade in total sales on Tuesday. Rockstar Games desperately wants to release GTA 6, but they are wise enough to only publish the newest chapter of their franchise title when it is absolutely kickass and not release a new and incomplete game every November like other gaming studios.

GTA 5 was released on September 17, 2013, waiting seven years is a long time in the gaming world. Sure Rockstar gave us some quality content to hold our attention with GTA Online and Red Dead Redemption 2, but fans of the immersive action-adventure game are hungry for a new story. A few rumors have emerged in the past week to possibly give us clues as to when we can expect Grand Theft Auto 6, plus when and where the game might take place.

According to TaxWatch UK, “an investigative think tank which monitors and reports on the tax payments of large companies working in the UK,” Rockstar Games’ spending exploded in 2019. Rockstar claimed £37.6m in Video Games Tax Relief from the British government in 2019.

“The claim is believed to relate to the production of the next edition of GTA, rumored to be scheduled for release soon,” the watchdog site said.

Grand Theft Auto 5 had a cost of $137 million, sold 115 million copies as of last November, and had made $6 billion as of April 2018, including $800 million in sales in first 24 hours of its release. TaxWatch claimed that Rockstar paid $0 in total corporation tax in the UK between 2009 and 2018.

Another sign of a new GTA in development is a peculiar social media post by someone who worked on Red Dead Redemption 2. Tim Neff is a gaming industry stuntman who has worked with Rockstar Games before. His Instagram, which has since gone private and the post removed, showed him “holding several guns while doing motion capture work,” according to Game Rant. He was seen wielding 80’s-era weaponry, including a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

“#GTA6 Tim Neff in the middle of a MoCap session,” a French tweet said. “It’s starting to do a lot around the development of GTA 6.”

There are rumors flying around that GTA 6 will be set in South America, especially in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro. A Reddit post that has since been deleted said that Grand Theft Auto VI started development in 2012, but didn’t really kick into high gear until 2015.

The game is codenamed “Project Americas,” for the South American locations as well as a return to Liberty City (New York City). The plot of the game is heavily influenced by the Netflix TV series Narcos, and there will be drug-running. The missions will be heavily influenced by the weather, especially hurricanes. GTA 6 will take you back in time to the 70s and 80s.

Another hint that GTA 6 will be set in the 70s and 80s is a recent Rockstar Games job listing. The new job listing at Rockstar’s main office in Scotland is looking for “Character Costume & Wardrobe Stylist” who will develop how characters dress in the next open-world game, as reported by Inverse.

One of the required “Skills” for the position is someone with “an obsessive eye for detail and drapery in respect of garments of all types, and an acute awareness of how fabrics and materials age and degrade over time.” This could lend credence to the rumors of the new GTA game happening in the 70s and 80s, where clothing would deteriorate and traveling from South America to New York City.

An alleged leak from nine months ago proclaimed that the location of GTA 6 would go back to the familiar spots of Vice City (Miami) and Liberty City (New York City).

In a new Rockstar Games blog post, the gaming studio thanked fans for a “record-breaking holiday season for both Grand Theft Auto Online and Red Dead Online.” Rockstar Games also teased that fans should “expect more big updates and a few surprises as we move forward into the year.”

Could the “big update” and “few surprises” mean that Rockstar will finally announce GTA 6?

Microsoft’s next-generation gaming console system Xbox Series X isn’t expected to be released until October of this year at the very earliest. Sony has indicated that the new PS5 will be available for “Holiday 2020,” so pretty much the same time, between October and December of 2020. There are rumors that Grand Theft Auto 6 will arrive after the release of the next-gen gaming consoles, so that puts a GTA 6 release date of around the first quarter of 2021.