As a “Stage of the Century”, Carjackers Six (GTA6) was the focus of the player’s attention when it had not yet been published, and the moment at which the studio was moving touched the eyes of the player and industry. A recent rumour that GTA6 might be extended again has reboiled the game, yet the entire wave actually stems from a typical Internet miscommunication and overreading.
The beginning of the wind: a blog that was taken out of contextThe incident began with a comment by Jason Schnell, a prominent journalist of Bloomberg, in a recent blog programme. In retrospect of the development history of the R star, he pointed out that The Wild Darts: Redemption 2 had two extensions: Originally scheduled for autumn 2017, it was postponed to spring 2018 and eventually released in October 2018. By comparison, Jason Schnell said that “if GTA6 were to follow a similar jump track, I would not be very shocked”.
“A game such as GTA6 carries too many and is therefore extremely risky and absolutely unacceptable to investors.” Jason Schnell explains in his blog: “The price of Take Two is even here, and every time the game is postponed, the price falls by 10 percent. So they would never publish any game that affected sales. Even if the October game is not ready, I think they would rather delay the release than be hard-headed.” Jason Schnell added that Star R had chosen November in order to provide a buffer time for Take Two to sell before the annual financial statements were released in March 2027. “It is clear that they want to catch up with the holiday season, the Black Friday and the customary Christmas promotion. But I think if they still want to release the game in the current fiscal year, they have some buffer time until next March.” The core logic of Jason Schnell is that the date of sale of 19 November 2026, which is now announced in GTA 6, is itself the result of two extensions (initially scheduled for sale in 2025). Therefore, if the game is not sold on time, the change will be its third extension. Jason Schnell, in his blog, made it clear that the article completely misconstrued his intentions, and that it was hard to say if the November game was going to be up to date, but he added that date “to feel more real than the previous rumored fall 2025”.
The birth of rumours: an over-understood “predict”However, some media and social platforms “disguised” Jason Schnell’s statement, which lost key language in Internet dissemination. Jason Schnell’s objective analogy with the history of R’s development was misinterpreted as his exclusive projection of the “third extension”. Although he himself clarified that he had only limited information at his disposal “as far as I know last time, the content of the game has not been fully completed”. This is quite common in the industry for the 3As that are in the advanced stages of development, but misunderstandings have emerged from outside. At one point, rumours such as “GTA6 will be extended for a third time and development cannot be completed by November” began to spread, and the related Reddit subscriptions and social media were caught up in a heated debate about the “challenge” and hypocrisy. Even on the forecast market, Polymark, the amount of the bets on the game being extended again soared. Jason Schnell himself commented on this: “This is so stupid.”
Jason Schnell wrote on social platform Bluesky: “The stock price of Take Two fell by $4.26 this afternoon due to rumours that GTA6 will be postponed. The rumor came from my podcast, but I didn’t personally say in the show that GTA6 would be postponed.”
Behind the alarm: the zeal of the whole industry.It seems boring, but it reveals the unmatched weight of GTA6 in the game industry today. According to Jason Schnell, the impact is far beyond the players’ group: the publication, marketing and even distribution of many other games are well organized around the current November distribution schedule of GTA6. Many of the works are being put on the market before them, or carefully chosen to be postponed until early 2027. A further extension of GTA6 would force the whole industry chain to be reoriented to fill the market vacuum it left. It is for this reason that any statement about its development progress is overreaded under the magnifying glass. This is not only a result of the over-anticipated expectations of the players, but also because their distribution has become a major industry event that has led to market rules, investment expectations and even lottery markets.
The “Ulong” ended with a clarification and update of the paragraph in the relevant media. In an era of high-transmission flows, work like GTA6 could be magnified by any wind-blowing movement. It is foreseeable that similar farces will be repeated before the game is sold. After all, the GTA6 is no longer confined to the game industry, but is a global expectation and game.
