Grand Theft Auto 6 is officially slated to drop in Fall 2025 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles.

The confirmation came straight from Take-Two Interactive, Rockstar Games’ parent company, during its fiscal year 2024 earnings call. Take-Two’s chief executive officer, Strauss Zelnick himself, doubled down on the Fall 2025 target, stating they feel “highly confident” they’ll deliver the hotly-awaited sequel within that window.

This narrows down the previously announced 2025 launch to just a few months at the end of next year, which is a bit further away than we had hoped. If Rockstar Games can hit that mark, it will culminate in one of the most drawn-out and hype-driven release cycles in gaming history.

To recap how we got here, the madness began in earnest last December when Rockstar released the first official GTA 6 trailer. Clocking in at over 93 million views in just 24 hours, it instantly attained status as the most-viewed game trailer premiere ever on YouTube. As of today, it has amassed an incredible 190 million views and counting.

The two-and-a-half-minute trailer was a tantalizing tease, confirming the return of the franchise’s beloved Vice City setting (a fictionalized version of Miami) and introducing players to the game’s dual protagonists for the first time: Lucia, a female lead for the series, and her male counterpart, Jason.

This news comes from the latest investor report from Rockstar’s parent company, Take-Two Interactive. To put that astounding number in perspective, GTA 5 is now the second-best-selling game of all time behind only the unstoppable Minecraft juggernaut (which has shifted around 300 million copies across PCs, consoles, mobile devices, and probably some smart refrigerators too).

What’s perhaps even more remarkable is that the 11-year-old game is still selling at a rate of around 5 million copies every quarter! That’s more than many brand new blockbuster releases manage in their entire lifetimes.

GTA 5‘s continued stellar performance makes total GTA franchise sales numbers look almost as criminally insane as the game’s protagonists (sorry, Trevor), with over 425 million copies shipped across the entire catalog – the ratio of that coming from the latest game is also wild.

So, what exactly is the secret behind GTA 5‘s endless money truck heist of success?

A big part of it is undoubtedly the hugely popular GTA Online mode, which has kept millions of players engaged and spending with a constant stream of new content updates over the past decade.

There is an absolutely mindboggling amount of things to do in the game (that are also fun! Quality isn’t quantity and whatnot), but to top that off fans have been adding their own content, too. The game’s thriving role-playing community has proven to be an especially potent driving force, with Twitch viewership numbers that would make most games envious.

If you don’t have a Salvage Yard yet; first of all, why? It is a great way to make some cash, especially earlier on or for shorted gaming sessions! Secondly, you will need one to benefit from this week’s main bonus opportunity, which is nabbing a free custom Übermacht Cypher (Sports).

By completing The Gangbanger Robbery and springing King Tiny from the slammer using the tricked out getaway car, you get the option of keeping the ride for yourself once the mission is over. Other Salvage Yard Robbery Targets this week include the Pfister Neon (Sports) and the Albany Brigham (Muscle).

In a YouTube clip shared by Vermeij, a player in GTA: San Andreas can be seen searching for a rare sports car model. As soon as they acquire one and drive out of town onto the highway, a line of traffic filled with the same rare model appears, almost as if the developers were taunting the player’s efforts to find a unique vehicle.

Vermeij, who worked on classic titles like GTA III, Vice City, and San Andreas, took to X (formerly Twitter) to explain the technical details behind this seemingly bizarre occurrence. It turns out that memory constraints on the PlayStation 2 console forced the developers to implement a clever system for managing vehicle models.

“Memory on the PS2 was tight,” Vermeij revealed. “We had to limit the number of used vehicle models to 8.” To accommodate this limitation, his code would periodically pick a car model to be phased out. Once there were no instances of that model left on the map, it could be removed from memory, freeing up space for a new model to be loaded.

The code would intelligently select models appropriate for the area, such as sports cars in business districts and old clunkers in run-down neighborhoods. However, as Vermeij explained, several factors could throw a wrench into this system’s smooth operation.

For instance, if the player had escalated their wanted level, some of the eight available slots would be taken up by police vehicles, SWAT vans, and helicopters. Additionally, level designers might load specific car models for missions, which might not be suitable for ambient traffic. Emergency vehicles like ambulances and fire trucks could also be required at any time, further complicating the model management.

Transitioning between different areas of the map could also cause jarring inconsistencies, as the loaded car models might appear out of place in the new environment. It would take time for more appropriate replacements to be loaded, potentially leaving the player surrounded by a sea of mismatched vehicles.

To alleviate these issues, the developers implemented a clever trick: garages would remove cars inside them once the door closed, allowing those models to be unloaded from memory. When the player reopened the garage, the cars would be recreated in the same spots, ensuring a seamless experience.

Vermeij’s recent tweets have proved to be a treasure trove of information, providing fans with a fascinating glimpse into the creative problem-solving skills that went into creating the popular classic GTA games. These revelations not only offer a deeper appreciation for the franchise but also serve as a reminder of the ingenuity and passion that went into bringing these fictional worlds to life.

Vermeij, surprised by the speed, dove into the technical details.

The speedrunner, he revealed, exploited several glitches in the game. They used a combination of restarts, replays, and accessing areas that should be locked. These tricks take advantage of bugs where the game’s code forgets to clear data properly during restarts or replays.

By cleverly starting and canceling missions in a specific way, the runner triggered a glitch that lets them launch the final mission without completing the earlier ones. Vermeij even admitted he was under the impression that restarts and reloads weren’t allowed in standard speedruns.

Hey @ObbeVermeij how's it going? https://t.co/iAHEiE2pgt did you know one could complete gta vc in 8 minites? Do you know what must be causing this?

— GTA EZ (@ez_gta) May 13, 2024

The GTA Twitter community then stepped in and provided detailed explanations about the different categories of speedrunning and how this one fit in. They explained it belonged to a category called “any% SSU.” SSU stands for Script Stack Underflow.

But what exactly is Script Stack Underflow? Imagine the game uses a to-do list, a “stack,” to keep track of mission tasks. Normally, this list has things that need to be done. But what happens if the list is empty and the game tries to check it? Instead of crashing, it gets confused. This confusion of the system is used as a secret weapon by the speedrunners. Speedrunners manipulate a timer in the game to trick it into thinking it’s time for the final mission, even though all the earlier missions haven’t been completed. This lets them skip straight to the end, slashing their completion time.

This type of speedrun isn’t about the traditional gameplay experience. It’s more about having deep knowledge of the game’s inner workings and how the scripts function. That’s why it falls under the “any% SSU” category, where pretty much anything goes, including exploits and messing with the scripts.

Whether it’s the mystery of the disappearing pigeons or the crashing planes, the back-and-forth between the GTA community and Obbe Vermeij, one of the GTA series’ original developers, offers a rare glimpse into the intricacies of game development and the unexpected ways games can be played.

Owners of a luxurious Galaxy Super Yacht can ring up Captain Darcy to partake in A Superyacht Life missions for double the usual GTA$ and RP rewards – unless you are a GTA+ subscriber, in which case you get 4x rewards. Non-owners of a luxurious Galaxy Super Yacht can instead take advantage on a 30% discount on said boats.

An army of eager fans are apparently monitoring the official website like hawks 24/7, so even a minor premature site update cannot slip past the community.

This is exactly what happened when Grand Theft Auto 6 was listed on a new page with empty screenshot placeholders.

Quite often we’ve seen a similar pattern repeat – be it with premature social media posts, website updates or telling entries in the Linkedin CVs of current and former employees. Whenever a bit too much is shared, it makes the rounds among the community, then suddenly disappears; all but confirming that it was indeed true. The latest instance of this hit the official Rockstar Games website.

Update: the new page (https://t.co/LdP9mtohyK) was just taken down, but the code with placeholders remains in the database that was made public yesterday.
Additionally, there are mentions of digital purchases (pre-orders).

R* was likely preparing the website and didn’t intend to… pic.twitter.com/T0VxaDnt3o

— GTA 6 Countdown (@GTAVI_Countdown) May 8, 2024

Fans visiting the page noticed a new section when navigating the list of games in the developer’s database of titles. Dedicated to GTA VI, this immediately caught attention as this list is focused on already launched titles. Adding to the interest was the unfinished state of the page, with a section titled “Screens” featuring some empty placeholders that would be highlighted when moused over.

Internet sleuths immediately dived in, trying to learn as much as they could with the ‘inspect‘ function present in most browsers. What we got out of this little slip up is file names and URLs, but no actual images. The best guess based on the unfinished website is that Rockstar is gearing up to release four new GTA 6 screenshots sometime soon.

Rockstar swooped in fairly quickly, locking down the wayward website and setting up redirects so any excited fans wanting to see the strange phenomenon for themselves would be sent to the promotional GTA 6 website with the reveal trailer. However, the code for the site is still discoverable using inspect, and references to digital pre-orders were also found after the fact.

The video, shared on Twitter (or X, if you prefer), depicts a player attempting to park a helicopter on a towed truck and driving it into a garage. So far, so good. However, when the garage door reopens, the laws of physics have gone completely out the window – the helicopter is now resting upside down while the truck remains perfectly upright.

@ObbeVermeij Sir,
I saw this interesting bug of GTA SA in Instagram.
Do you know why it is happening?https://t.co/Kh8wK7B3OS

— DindaD (@DindaDattatreya) May 2, 2024

It gets even better. When the player tows the flipped helicopter back out and climbs aboard, the chopper takes off and proceeds to fly along… upside down. Thankfully, former Rockstar developer Obbe Vermeij, who worked on San Andreas and has been on a recent “behind the scenes” streak online, had a simple explanation for the gravity-defying bug.

According to him, when a garage door closed, the game would remove the vehicles inside to reduce RAM usage on aging PlayStation 2 hardware – this method isn’t exclusive to San Andreas, but is fairly common; and also fairly often the source of some glitches.

However, upon reopening the garage, the vehicles were recreated based on their stored positions and attributes. It seems that the code responsible for this process encountered a glitch when dealing with helicopters, leading to their inverted recreation.

Alongside the new game, subscribers can now also access new benefits inside GTA Online including free vehicles, outfits and exclusive bonuses not part of the usual weekly rotation.

Those of you who are subscribers to the GTA Plus service already had access to a library of Rockstar titles at no additional cost which included classic GTA installments as well as some hits from other franchises, like Red Dead Redemption. The latest addition to this library is the open-world retro detective thriller L.A. Noire, allowing you to press X to doubt for free.

However, being a subscription service for GTA Online players, naturally the bulk of the benefits should be available in GTA Online. Alongside the baseline benefits you gain by subscribing, new goodies are periodically added to the offerings – in this case, Överflöd Entity MT (Super).

The Entity MT isn’t the only free vehicle you can unlock as a subscriber either – the Classique Broadway (Muscle) and Albany Roosevelt (Sports Classic) are also available for free to GTA+ subscribers via Legendary Motorsport through the 5th of June.

Open Wheel Races, the legally-distinct facsimile of Formula One in the Grand Theft Auto world, are paying out not double but triple the usual GTA$ and RP all week long. Grab your helmet and pray your pit crew is up to snuff as you burn rubber for extra rewards through the 8th of May. Alongside the bonuses, completing 3 OWRs will get you a one-time GTA$100,000 reward and the Rockstar Racing Suit for free.

While the real-world cost of F1 cars are tightly kept trade secrets, they’re estimated to run up to around $15 million, while in-game a Progen PR4 will set you back GTA$ 3.5 million – if you’d feel nervous repeated crashing something that valuable, maybe stick to RC Bandito Races, where the stakes are a lot lower, but the same 3X GTA$ and RP bonus applies.