There have been very few video games, if any at all, that have rivalled the cultural dominance of Grand Theft Auto (GTA). The world is practically holding its breath for the release of its latest instalment, GTA 6. But as we’ve all heard, its release has been unsurprisingly postponed again, this time to November 19, 2026, roughly a year from now.

It’s almost like a real-life experience of the game’s popular quote, “Here we go again,” following what has been a frustrating wait for fans. It has been 12 years since GTA 5 was released, and it will be 13 by the time GTA 6 finally arrives — if it does — in November 2026. Even the Guinness World Records team couldn’t resist checking their data, as they’d later confirm that GTA 6 still isn’t the longest-in-development game ever. That record belongs to the notoriously delayed Duke Nukem Forever, which took a staggering 14 years and 43 days to complete.

Amid these, a key technical detail that GWR bases its count on, and that many frustrated gamers overlook, is that a game’s development time officially begins when it is formally announced, not when the previous instalment was released. This means GTA 6, which was hurriedly announced by Rockstar Games in 2022 after a major hacker leak, has officially been in development for only about three years. If it does arrive in 2026, that would put its development time at around four years, one less than it took GTA 5.

That doesn’t make the delay any less disappointing, but it helps explain why Rockstar doesn’t seem particularly time-pressed to release what’s expected to be one of the biggest entertainment launches ever, even as the postponement reportedly continues to weigh on the stock of its parent company, Take-Two Interactive.

Rockstar’s reason for the recent postponement is simple: it needs more time to deliver the best possible experience. In their words, “We are sorry for adding additional time to what we realise has been a long wait, but these extra months will allow us to finish the game with the level of polish you have come to expect and deserve.”

Naturally, reactions have been mixed. Some fans have suggested that the company’s recent layoff of over 35 employees for leaking sensitive information might be linked to the delay. But that’s a negligible figure for a multinational company with more than 6,000 employees. A layoff of less than one per cent of its workforce is hardly enough to derail a project of this magnitude.

If there’s any developer that has proven to be worth its salt, it’s Rockstar Games. Its recent numbers are enough to back that up. GTA 5 remains the second best-selling game of all time, while Red Dead Redemption 2 sits comfortably in fourth. With a pedigree like that, it tracks that Rockstar wants to take its time to build on the franchise’s legacy.

GTA 6, expected to be larger in scope than both of those titles, will likely require just as much, if not more, development time, considering it’s also going to be Rockstar’s sole release for the current console generation. So while the delay may be frustrating, it seems nothing more mysterious than the studio’s commitment to the excellence that has earned it its reputation.