It's the end of an era for marveling at all the stuff we got before GTA VI. The game is officially, truly, really, finally something people can pay actual money for. And it’s bound to be a biggie.
The release comes after Rockstar invested over $1 billion into GTA VI, with the standard edition priced at an unprecedented £80 and a whopping £100 ultimate edition. Preorders start today, setting the stage for a likely record-breaking launch. The hype appears to be sufficient to reach those heights, given that fan communities on Reddit and Discord have whipped themselves into a frenzy about every minute detail they can glean from Rockstar’s sporadic posts.
The game won’t actually be out for another five months but it has garnered its share of dismay. For one, the game doesn’t come with a disc; preorders are only digital copies. People are also mad about the Ultimate edition, which costs £100 and includes in-game features that players on the standard edition will be locked out of.
“GTA has built its success on being this countercultural narrative mock and parody of American civilization and consumer culture,” says Joost van Dreunen. “In 2026, is it still possible to mock and provide satire on American civilization? It seems like real life has long caught up with art.”
Regardless, GTA VI is almost certainly too big to fail. Even 13 years after release, people are playing GTA V and GTA Online in regular multiplayer or in elaborate roleplaying servers. Videos of people messing around in the game’s lively world are consistently in the top-viewed streaming videos on platforms like Twitch.
