By trying to avoid a Cyberpunk 2077 fiasco and delaying GTA 6 again, I hope Take-Two doesn’t end up with another Duke Nukem Forever instead
So another day, another GTA6 delay, with the highly anticipated game now scheduled for November 19, 2026, although many of us expect that date to move back again. After all, it’s best to prepare for disappointment and not get your hopes up. At this rate, I won’t believe GTA 6 is coming until I have the game installed on my hard drive.
Yet despite my already gloomy outlook, this further delay was a blow. I advance in years, and in my most morbid moments (I am not that old), I’m afraid of dying before playing the next one RGT. At this rate, I fear our sun will expand and consume the Earth, followed by the eventual heat death of the universe, causing Take-Two to delay the game further.
I’m old enough to remember the heady days when we arrived three GTA games, GTA III, GTA Vice City, And GTA San Andreas in just under four years. These days, it feels like entire civilizations rise and fall between episodes.
If I look a little dark, maybe even a little dramaticso please humor me. As you might have guessed from my reference to hard drives, I’m primarily a PC gamer these days, so even if GTA 6 launches on consoles next November, those waiting for the PC version (which, let’s face it, will be the best) will have to wait even longer.
I might wait until 2027 for this game, which makes it 30 years since I first played the GTA series, which originally launched on PC before consoles.
I can’t see the forest because of the trees
All joking aside, I see the reason for delaying the match. Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Take-Two spoke to IGN to say that “when our competitors go to market before something is ready, bad things happen.”
It’s clear that the people at Take-Two, which publishes the GTA series, had seen the extremely difficult launches of games like No Man’s Sky, Mindseye, And Fallout 76which were criticized at the time of their release for apparently being released before they were completed.
The most famous example of this, and one that has certainly not gone unnoticed by Take-Two or Rockstar, is the notorious launch of Cyberpunk 2077.
A graphically ambitious open-world RPG, a follow-up to the universally acclaimed role-playing game Witcher 3the hype before its launch was huge. Then, after some delays, Cyberpunk 2077 was apparently forced to start in a very complicated and unfinished state. The backlash was huge and almost single-handedly killed developer CD Projekt Red’s reputation.
It makes perfect sense that the team behind GTA 6 wouldn’t want something similar to happen, and delaying the game again to avoid this would certainly be wise. However, by delaying GTA 6 even further (it’s now been 12 years since GTA 5 launched), I fear the game won’t become the next Cyberpunk 2077… but the next Duke Nukem forever.
Current record for the longest development period for a video game? 14 years and 43 days. Officially announced on April 28, 1997 by developer 3D Realms, the FPS ‘Duke Nukem Forever’ was finally released on June 10, 2011. https://t.co/8XBZGM3i98November 6, 2025
Duke Nukem forever was announced in 1997, following the commercial and critical success of Duke Nukem 3D. After years of delays, the game finally launched in 2011, 14 years after it was first announced. Was it worth the wait? Unfortunately no, it just wasn’t a very good game.
Now I don’t in any way think that GTA6 will be a bad game, but as the delays pile up I fear it could feel like Duke Nukem forever by other means.
For starters, over the many years of development, 3D Realms, the developers, have made many promises regarding the game. And with each year that passes without a release, the speculation and hype has increased (at least to begin with). It has become almost mythical, and whatever its condition or quality Duke Nukem forever Ultimately, it never lived up to most people’s expectations.
Was it worth the wait? Unfortunately no, it just wasn’t a very good game.
I can see the same thing happening with GTA6. The longer we have to wait, the wilder the speculation becomes – especially since Rockstar isn’t giving out much information. So people are hoping the map is massive, able to depict an entire state made up of several huge cities, all with buildings that can be entered.
Other people are coming up with ambitious theories about the storyline, and while I think GTA 6 will have a big map and an involving storyline, even with the long development time and huge budget the team has, it simply won’t be able to live up to some people’s expectations, inevitably leading to disappointment. The longer the delays, the more these expectations will increase.
Turn into a joke
There is also another danger. While Duke Nukem forever long development initially generated hype and enthusiasm, it eventually took so long that it became an ongoing joke. Even now, it’s often talked about (as I do) when a game is seriously delayed.
When players (and critics) stop being excited about your game and start joking about it, it’s not a good sign.
Another major problem with long development times is that Duke Nukem forever continued the bawdy and non-PC humor of Duke Nukem 3Dwhat was very of his time. In the more enlightened 2000s, this humor fell completely flat.
Meanwhile, during these years we waited Duke Nukem forever, many flagship games have been launched, including Half-life And Halothat transformed our expectations of what first-person shooters (FPS) could be. When Duke Nukem forever finally arrived, not only was its humor outdated, but so was its gameplay.
The longer GTA 6 is delayed, the more work will have to be done to ensure the story and humor remain relevant.
This is a very real danger for GTA 6. The series has always indulged in bold humor, but some of the things we laughed at in 2013 with GTA 5 aren’t as funny anymore. The series also takes great pride in satirizing the world, particularly the United States, but that world has changed significantly since then. More GTA6 is delayed, the more work will have to be done to ensure the story and humor remain relevant.
In terms of gameplay, Take-Two and Rockstar also need to be careful. Since the launch of GTA 5it inspired a slew of open-world rivals, and while some of them were pale imitations, others continued to innovate in the genre, including Rockstar’s own. Red Dead Redemption 2. The further we move away from GTA 5at the release of, the less impressed we will be if GTA6 sticks too closely to the gameplay of its predecessor.
I’ve been around long enough to see many games that get stuck in development hell and then manage to escape from it, like Daikatanaanother famous example, only to end in great disappointment.
Take-Two’s fear that GTA 6 will become the next Cyberpunk 2077 could end up subjecting him to an even worse fate. After all, Cyberpunk 2077 finally found redemption after CD Projekt Red worked hard to fix its flawed launch, while Duke Nukem forever ended up becoming a joke And an edifying story.
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