In May 2025, Rockstar announced it was delaying Grand Theft Auto 6 until May 2026. Then, a few months later, it announced it was delaying GTA 6 again to November 2026. For many fans, these back-to-back delays were excruciating and disappointing. And for Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick, it apparently seemed like a prank.
On October 14, Bloomberg published a lengthy report about Rockstar Games and its work on GTA 6, its upcoming open-world crime simulator that is set to be the biggest game release of the decade when it arrives on November 19. However, remember that when the game was first revealed in December 2023, Rockstar promised a launch window of 2025. According to Rockstar’s leaders, they believed that was possible, though some devs below them weren’t convinced. But as they got closer, Rockstar North’s head of development and co–studio head Rob Nelson realized they needed more time.
“You feel a huge pressure and obligation to deliver the highest-quality game in the most aggressive time scale that you can,” Nelson told Bloomberg. “And then you keep evaluating it as you go. And then you have to decide when you get within striking distance of that if it is actually achievable.”
So the devs told Rockstar head of publishing Jennifer Kolbe to phone up Take-Two boss Zelnick to ask for more time, which he granted. Then a few months later in 2025, Kolbe had to ring him up again to ask for another delay, this time pushing GTA 6 back until November 2026.
“I think he said, ‘You’re kidding,’” recalled Kolbe. “Please tell me you’re kidding,’”
“But once we talked through why, he got it. And I think we are really lucky that he is as reasonable as he is, because a lot of people would say, ‘You’d just better figure out how to ship it.’ And we have been really, really lucky that we have not found ourselves in that place, because that happens to a lot of teams, and we’ve all played those games. It’s not great.”
Zelnick explained that it’s usually a “wise investment in time” and resources to give devs more time and delay a game’s launch in order for it to “reach the level of perfection it has the ability to reach.” Still, I get the feeling that was not a fun call for him or Kolbe.