Rockstar is notoriously secretive about its games. Grand Theft Auto 6 has been in the works for a decade now, and aside from a confirmation in 2022 that it was in development and a trailer released in December 2023, we know almost nothing about the game other than that it will launch in 2025.
Fans have driven themselves into a frenzy trying to predict when trailers will drop, clinging to obscure details like they're picking apart a Taylor Swift album. They come up with conspiracy theories, hunt down the actors, even figure out what sunscreen characters use. The fans are so fiercely loyal that Rockstar doesn't need to promote the game – the fans do it all themselves.
Does revealing details hurt the game?
Compare this to launches like Starfield's and Cyberpunk 2077's. Starfield suffered at launch because it kept doing these long presentations where the developers talked in detail about the game, so fans could take those details and run with it. Cyberpunk faced a similar problem – its marketing positioned it as far more ambitious than it actually was at launch, and it managed to redeem itself only years after launch.
Already, CD Projekt Red is building hype for The Witcher 4 by saying it will be “bigger and better,” basically retreading their mistakes with Cyberpunk 2077. We even saw Geralt's voice actor, Doug Cockle, go back to his comments and said that Geralt would be in The Witcher 4 saying that he was running a rumor and that he was “beaten by CD Projekt”. This does not bode well for the studio, as we already know how the hype cycle can backfire on highly anticipated games.
From these examples, it might seem that big games like these benefit from their developers keeping their lips sealed. Fans are themselves a hype machine. They take what they know and blow it up into theories of extravagant proportions, creating unfair expectations for the work. Everyone wants to believe that the game they are looking forward to will be the best ever created, the next Skyrim or, yes, GTA 5. They want to believe that their most anticipated title will change the gaming landscape forever.
That is almost never the case. Silence means fans will go into a frenzy whining about details, but they'll have no basis to blame their incorrect speculation on the developers. This seems ideal in an industry that is increasingly hostile to developers and with ever-increasing expectations, especially for games that have been in the works for a long time and essentially have their own mythologies.
But at the same time, we have to remember that Grand Theft Auto 6 was already highly anticipated before it was even confirmed to be in development. It is part of a very popular series, the sequel to an excellent game, and was the series that made Rockstar a household name. GTA 6 never needed marketing, and should be considered something of an outlier. It's like very few other games, but the closest analogue is the next Elder Scrolls game – it will attract tons of attention with very little effort.
Perhaps more important is the fact that Rockstar's silence is symptomatic of the industry's overall secrecy when it comes to development. Since games can change so much over the course of development, releasing details could once again lead to fans having unrealistic expectations.
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I'm already dreading the 2025 game release schedule
GTA 6, Avowed, Death Stranding 2, Fable… is it over for me?
Privacy does not favor most developers
But that secrecy is exactly what feeds this hype cycle and fosters hostility towards developers. The people who buy and play video games just don't understand how the things they love so much are made. They don't understand why decisions are made—for example, why games may be reduced in scope during development—and therefore see it as harmful instead of economically necessary. The developers at CD Projekt Red didn't release a broken game because they wanted players to be mad at them, there were external factors that caused it. Secrecy can be an effective marketing tactic, but it's also a contributing factor to how developers are increasingly treated.
It's interesting that early access development is starting to rise to the forefront, especially after the success of Baldur's Gate 3 last year. As I've written before, early access is a way for players to get in on the ground level and see how games change over time, and it helps developers temper expectations while getting feedback from the people they want to serve. This probably wouldn't work for Grand Theft Auto 6, because of the hype around it – hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, of players will jump in expecting a full-fledged game, and probably get really pissed off when it's not that polished as they lack.
But why should the industry at large conform to secrecy instead of talking openly about the development process? Why wouldn't major studios move towards early access to create games more collaboratively with their audience and to make the development process more transparent?
Rockstar benefits from silence, as Grand Theft Auto 6's existence promotes itself. This does not mean that the industry has to follow the biggest players. I want to hear more about games as they're being made, but not just the vague hype-making statements that say it's going to be better than anything the studio has ever done before, because they all say so. Silence is not always golden.
Grand Theft Auto 6 is an upcoming title in the long-running series from Rockstar Games. Currently slated for a 2025 launch, details are scarce, though it appears to focus on a Bonnie-and-Clyde-like pairing of characters.
