When do GTA 6 reviews come out? What has been reported, and what is still a guess
One report says review copies go out before the end of October. An earlier one said nobody would get a copy at all. Rockstar has not said a word, and its own history points to a very short gap.
Grand Theft Auto 6 unlocks on 19 November. Rockstar has not announced when reviews can be published, and it is not the sort of company that does. So this is what has been reported, who said it, and how it lines up with what Rockstar has done before.
The latest report: copies before the end of October
Insider Gaming reported that a review embargo will lift before the release date, and then deleted the story. The insider NateTheHate, who has a good record on Rockstar dates, followed up to say that copies would go out before the end of October. Notebookcheck worked out that this would give reviewers three weeks or more with the game.
Neither has been confirmed by Rockstar or Take-Two. A deleted article is a weak source, and NateTheHate's claim reaches us secondhand. That is why this page is labelled Rumour.
The earlier report: no copies at all
In May, the Brazilian journalist Pedro Henrique Lutti Lippe said the opposite: that nobody would be getting a key, and that reviewers would play at some kind of controlled review event instead. That was always going to be difficult for a game this size, which you cannot meaningfully review in a weekend in a hotel conference room.
Both reports can be partly true. Copies sent out early with tight conditions attached, such as a console tied to a single account, is a common compromise for games with a leak problem.
And GTA 6 has a leak problem
It has had one for four years. Through August and October a leaker posting as cyberleek has been releasing footage from a development build, including about twenty-five minutes of it reported on 8 October. Rockstar's concern about review copies is not hypothetical. Every week a copy exists outside the building is a week it can escape.
What Rockstar has done before
- GTA 5. Reviews went up on 16 September 2013. The game came out on 17 September. One day.
- Red Dead Redemption 2. Reviews went up on 25 October 2018, for a 26 October release. One day again.
Rockstar has given critics the game weeks early both times. It has never let them publish more than a day ahead. The likeliest outcome is the same pattern again: copies in late October or early November, and an embargo on 18 November, the day before launch. That is our inference from the pattern, not a report.
Why it matters to you
If you have already pre-ordered, a review is not going to change your mind. If you are on the fence between standard and Ultimate, or about the base PS5 versus a Pro, reviews and technical breakdowns are where you will find out how it actually runs. An embargo a day out means planning for that information arriving with very little time to act on it before preloading closes.
It also means spoilers. Once copies are out, footage follows. If you want to go in clean, now is the time to mute words on social media rather than the week of release.
What is not known
The embargo date, whether reviewers get retail-equivalent copies or a supervised build, and whether technical outlets such as Digital Foundry get the same date as critics. This page will be updated when Rockstar or a reviewing outlet confirms any of it.
Sources
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