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The wait for one of the most anticipated video games in history just got a little bit longer.

Despite targeting a 2025 release, Rockstar Games has —the latest edition of the massively popular franchise—to May 26, 2026. This delay is already sending shockwaves through the video game industry.

While gamers are disappointed, Illinois Tech Professor of Digital Humanities and Media Studies Carly Kocurek—a cultural historian specializing in the study of new media technologies and gaming—sees some good in the postponement, both for players and creators alike.

She hopes that the delay may be a sign that Rockstar is committed to prioritizing the well-being of its developers.

“Rockstar has had a bad reputation for labor practices; it’s because they really were notorious for ‘crunch,’” says Kocurek, referring to reports in 2018 of Rockstar employees working 100-plus hours per week in the lead-up to the release of Red Dead Redemption 2. “I’m actually optimistic that the delay means shifts in how they’re thinking about deadlines and how they’re thinking about workers.”

Kocurek also points out that because the Grand Theft Auto franchise has so often been a pioneer in “sandbox,” worldbuilding-type games, this latest delay is simply the reality of creating a cutting-edge game.

“If you delay the game but it’s good, everyone will forget that it was late,” says Kocurek. “If the game comes out on time and it’s bad, it never gets better.”

Still, the impact of the delay on the industry will likely be far-reaching, with many other game developers having planned their release schedules around Grand Theft Auto 6.

And creating the massive world that Grand Theft Auto is traditionally known for could represent the biggest risk. While the franchise has set the standard for years in the gaming industry in terms of graphics, CGI, and worldbuilding, Rockstar is betting that consumers will still flock to an expansive and splashy AAA (high-budget, high-profile) game.

“Grand Theft Auto is almost the traditional idea of what a gamer is: people who want really big, intense games that require a certain level of skill and engagement within a narrative world of the game,” says Kocurek. “Is that still where the market is?  Or could the industry actually be moving toward tiny mobile games or match-three games? Certainly, those are highly profitable. Any time you invest really heavily in a project, you’re making a lot of assumptions about what people want.”