Summary
Three major video game publishers are reportedly prepared to delay their upcoming releases to avoid Rockstar Games' looming juggernaut:Grand Theft Auto 6. While an exact release date forGTA 6hasn’t been divulged, its fall 2025 launch window still seems to be warding off a lot of developers and publishers from targeting game releases during that period.
Excitement forGTA 6is off the charts on an unprecedented scale when it comes to gamers, but it’s a different story for the games industry itself. Prior reports alleged thatGTA 6is affecting game release schedules for 2025across several publishers, as tens of millions of players are expected to flock to the Rockstar behemoth once it launches. This will most likely lead to other games being overshadowed, and therefore publishers feel compelled to reconsider their launch cadences to stay as far away fromGTA 6as possible.
As fans awaitnews onGTA 6’s release datewith bated breath, so does the rest of the games industry. A newreport fromThe Game Businessclaims that three major publishers are ready to postpone their upcoming games to avoid going head-on againstGTA 6. The report includes conversations with multiple executives who confirmed that they areactively planning game releases withGTA 6’s launch in mind. Some publishers are shifting release dates, while others are delaying major content updates for their live-service games to avoid competing for players' time onceGTA 6is out.
Publishers Coming Up With “Multiple Plans” to Prevent Being Overshadowed by GTA 6
One unnamed exec at a major publisher outright admitted, “We don’t want to be anywhere near [GTA 6]. We are working up multiple different plans for our titles.” Another industry figure concurred with this sentiment, stating that even withoutGTA 6, it’s “immensely difficult” to find the right window for “new games to shine,” while a third exec (supposedly from a prominent European AAA publisher) explained that publishers are facing a hefty dilemma:releasing beforeGTA 6means dealing with an already-packed summer schedule, while launching later puts them in competition with Black Friday deals.
GTA 6 is basically a huge meteor, and we will just stay clear of the blast zone.
It should be noted thatGTA 6’s release concerns aren’t just impacting small and medium-sized publishers. In February, EA CEO Andrew Wilson hinted at adjusting therelease window for the nextBattlefieldgamedue to an unspecified forthcoming major title, widely assumed to beGTA 6. A huge potential hurdle, though, is the possibility ofGTA 6being delayed into 2026. Some publishers fear that moving their games out of 2025 to avoidGTA 6might backfire if Rockstar also chooses to go with a delay, forcing yet another round of scheduling changes. As the European exec put it, “If we move out of 2025, what if Rockstar does too? Will we have time to push our game up? Or will we have to delay further? It’s stressful.”
