Forbidding some kind of disaster, it does seem like we're on track to get Grand Theft Auto VI in our hands this November. Even without seeing proper gameplay yet, people have already been given the chance to pre-order Grand Theft Auto VI, either through its more expensive Ultimate Edition or the content-deprived Standard Edition. As expected, this game will be expensive. $80 is the minimum amount of money a copy of Grand Theft Auto VI will cost at launch. Plus, no matter what version of the game you buy, everything - and we mean everything - is coming to you digitally.
On the one hand, it's not really surprising in the current market we're in to see Rockstar completely ditch the idea of physical collectibles in a bigger, more expensive edition of its latest GTA. Grand Theft Auto V's Collector's Edition launched with a map, a cap, a bag, a steelbook, and an assortment of other goodies, but that was nearly a decade and a half ago now. Scalpers weren't nearly so much of a problem as they are today, and if Grand Theft Auto VI had say given out a Lucia and Jason statue in a $300 Collector's Edition, you can be sure that people would have definitely complained about the price, and it would have been sold out within minutes of pre-orders going live, appearing on eBay moments later at double the cost.
It's doubtful Rockstar has put everything that comes in the Ultimate Edition, as well as the pre-order bonus, inside Grand Theft Auto VI's digital copies out of wanting to avoid a scalper disaster. That's bad press, sure, but the developer has found itself in some hot water due to the lack of physical versions, and single-player content being locked depending on the edition you purchase. The latter element is nothing new for Rockstar. Red Dead Redemption 2 had an entire heist segment locked behind a paywall, but it has been eight years since that game launched. People have forgotten, and so the controversy rises anew.
That is to say, I'm not convinced any criticisms of the $80 price, the paywalled content, nor even the lack of a disc in the launch boxes are going to slow Rockstar's roll. Grand Theft Auto VI will almost undoubtedly break records when it releases. So long as it manages to meet the hype, it's also probably going to sit as the Game of the Year for many outlets and awards shows, too. Grand Theft Auto VI's monstrous success is all but guaranteed, but while this industry-defining moment itself doesn't look like much can tarnish it, what comes after could be a different story.
The paywalled content is icky. The lack of a physical disc is suspicious, even if a proper physical edition could launch before the end of the year. The $80 price tag isn't exactly new, but it is something we're still grudgingly getting used to. If 2025 proved that the best games of a year didn't have to be the most expensive titles either from a consumer or developer perspective, 2026 has the potential to stomp all over that, as publishers will surely look to Grand Theft Auto VI's success and think they can follow the same trends. As anyone who knows the industry well will tell you, though, Rockstar is a very unique beast. No one else does what they do. No one else gets the same kind of faith that people have in them to deliver Grand Theft Auto VI, and even Rockstar won't experience a moment like this. As I've said on the podcast many times before, we get one of these.
Does the games industry often listen to this kind of logic? No, not really. It's why we've had year after year of live-service flops, why Soulslikes have defined third-person fantasy RPGs for the better part of a decade, and why we're sure some publishers will think their game can pull a Grand Theft Auto VI. The problem is, GTA will establish that you can get away with an $80 minimum price tag, and a $100 recommended one. It'll show that people don't care about owning the disc in the box, because if the hype is strong enough, they'll throw a lot of purchasing principles aside in order to finally bring an incredibly long wait to its end. This is a potentially dangerous precedent to set, because it means even after a year where a £50 game developed by 33 people wowed the industry, we could go right back to being told $80 is the new norm, with us realistically having to spend a lot more money on a game to get the full content available. We're also likely to see more and more physical editions being shirked, which in the long run will only lead to titles being taken offline, reminding us that our purchase does not give us ownership, but a license to play for a time that can be as limited or as unlimited as a publisher or platform owner pleases.
These disastrous scenarios are not too common, in fairness, and even in major flops like the case of Concord, we saw people getting refunds from Sony for their purchase of the fastest-killed live-service game ever. It's also worth mentioning that this isn't Rockstar's fault, nor even Take-Two's. Grand Theft Auto VI is going to be a huge, monumental game (providing no disasters take place), and more than enough people have said they'd gladly pay extra for it, knowing the kind of experience they'll get. The value is clear, even if it's not pleasing to part with £90 for a game no matter the edition. What I do worry about, though, is that we'll soon get another bandwagon to hop on. A new dragon to chase, as even big names try to copy Rockstar's pre-order and release pattern, failing to realise the value they provide compared to Grand Theft Auto VI is nowhere near the same.
I worry about that because that is what leads to games flopping. Then when flops happen, layoffs come in. Layoffs occur even when a game succeeds, I know, but companies trying to copy Rockstar's pattern without making games as good as Rockstar's catalogue isn't going to add any stability to the rocky industry we're looking at. When I first heard about people claiming Grand Theft Auto VI's success would be bad for the industry, I wondered what they could mean. Now, I see that while the game itself is likely to be phenomenal, the practises in its pre-order process can set a dangerous precedent for the future of AAA releases. If Grand Theft Auto VI had come out five or even eight years after the launch of its predecessor, we probably wouldn't be putting so much weight on this lot of pre-orders. However, this is likely to be the biggest game launch we've seen. We just get one of these, and so it's more important than ever that the industry sees this as some anomalous event, rather than an excuse to ramp up prices, budgets, and lock more single-player content behind a paywall.
