Do We Have To Talk About Grand Theft Auto VI Like This?

When I was between jobs last year, I got part-time work at The Exchange, a regional chain of stores filled with used games and DVDs. One thing I liked about that job was getting to interact with customers who were more casual about video games than I am.

One shift, a boy came in with his grandma and asked to purchase one of the Grand Theft Auto games. The grandmother, unsure, called his mother to make sure it was OK with her, and the mother said no. The boy got on the phone with his mother and promised that he “wouldn’t do anything bad in it” (I don’t know the series well enough but a friend I told this story said the first mission was killing a prostitute so I don’t think that’s possible.)

I bring this story up because it demonstrates one of the reasons Grand Theft Auto VI is a big deal for the industry: people who are not invested in games know about it. The people who didn’t know about the Switch 2 leaks and who mainly buy the new Call of Duty every year know about Grand Theft Auto, and that’s automatically a wider player base.

Grand Theft Auto V is both one of the most expensive games of all time and one of the highest-grossing. It’s perfectly reasonable to be excited for the sequel and assume it will make a lot of money, just like it was easy to assume in 2016 that the next Avengers movie would do well.

Those are different that assuming the game will be the best thing ever though.

Never Assume a Game Will be Good

There’s a saying among creatives that you shouldn’t make art for a large audience, you should make art for yourself and six other weirdos. This is both because it’s more fun and trying to make something you like will result in a better product than trying to make something that appeals to a vast imagined audience.

This also applies to discussing games pre-release. Knowing you are one of the six weirdos this is made for does not mean you should cover a game assuming everyone will enjoy it, which has been the underlying assumption for GTA VI

I first noticed this a month ago when I saw the article “Can anything beat GTA 6 for Game of the Year 2025?” which boldly states:

That, frankly, is a terrible way to write about any video game in 2025. Having a stellar studio track record didn’t help Cyberpunk 2077 on release, and cultural hegemony didn’t get people to play Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League.

For years we have had stories of major games being broken at launch, selling poorly, or a thousand other things. In 2025 you cannot assume a game will be good when it launches. Especially one that’s only had a single trailer at the time of writing. You can assume you will like it, but that’s not the same as assuming everyone will.

Will It Effect the Industry? Who Knows! You Don’t

This assumption that GTA VI will be the most profitable game to ever exist is so entrenched that industry analysts are trying to calculate its impact.

Matthew Ball identified GTA 6 as a potential “growth factor” for the industry and said, “some gamemakers hope GTA VI will be priced at $80-100, breaking the $70 barrier and helping $50 to move up to $60, $60 to do $70, $70 to $80, etc.”

Now there were dozens of articles the week this report dropped, mostly summarizing it as “would customers be willing to pay $100 for GTA VI?” but my greatest question (which was probably outside the purview of Ball’s presentation) was:

Are we assuming one game will be so good no one would balk at a price raise? Or, rather, enough people won’t balk that it’ll make its money back. This is some back-of-the-napkin math, admittedly, but if a game was sold at $60, and its sequel at $100, you need 60% of the people who bought the first game to be willing to shell out for $100 to make the same amount of money. That is, of course, assuming these games have the same budget which we know they do not.

 (For the record, Ball has said he thinks the game will be $70, these are just easier numbers for me to do the math.)

So for GTA VI to be a growth driver for the industry, it has to be so good that: 

• Enough people will be interested in it they won’t mind the price raise

• Will buy it at launch at full price

• It will be so good everyone will agree it was worth the price rise 

• And that goodwill transfers to other games that also raise their prices.

This might be my chronic anxiety, but that seems as realistic as planning your business around winning the lottery.

We Don’t Even Need to Talk About Good Games Like This

Let’s assume this game is the greatest thing ever, it appeals to a wide customer base and draws in new people who weren’t previously interested in the series.

It would still be irresponsible to be this reverent in your coverage of any game. Even if it’s good. If you’re a games writer who’s supposed to watch out for consumers, why are you telling them something you haven’t played or seen gameplay of is going to be the best thing ever?

Hype is a corrosive force in the video game industry, leading to people being willing to declare their fealty for a game they haven’t played on the back of breathless coverage and the idea that “of course” this will be good, and the flipside is anyone who doesn’t fall in-line with this becomes a target.

The incident that sticks out the most to me is when Cyberpunk 2077 first came out. Fans who had not played the game were so offended that a journalist who wrote that a sequence in the game gave her a seizure and may be dangerous, that they sent her videos that trigger seizures.

Finally, the other problem with this kind of hype is that it’s impossible to meet those expectations. Once you get players fantasizing about the coolest thing they can think of, what the best game ever would be, there’s a point where those imaginations don’t meet reality.

To paraphrase Guinan from Star Trek: The Next Generation you’re setting readers up for one of the most horrific experiences ever, something that doesn’t live up to their expectations. 

I’m not necessarily against the idea that the next Grand Theft Auto game will be a big deal. I think short of being unplayable at launch, it will probably make more money than I can even dream of. And even if it is broken at launch it will probably still make a ridiculous amount of money.

My issue is that it’s not a good habit for journalists to talk about a game like this, even if it does sell well at the end of the day. It encourages an unhealthy mindset based on hype, discourages critical coverage, and no matter which way the penny falls, someone will probably face a tidal wave of harassment.

There is a balanced way to talk about upcoming games even ones you are pretty sure you’re going to like. Worshipping the ground it walks on is not it.