GTA6 continues its development without issues, but at Take-Two, they do not hesitate to shut down anything for it

Take-Two is one of those companies that does much more than it seems. Although they are especially known for being the parent company of Rockstar, the developers of GTA, they are actually a company with a large catalog of companies and IPs. They have a significant impact on the industry throughout the year and not just when they release the event game of the decade every time Rockstar completes it. Each time more slowly. That’s why it’s so interesting to see their latest quarterly results. And so concerning.

Let’s start with the good news. GTA6 has not suffered any delays and its release is still scheduled for the fall of 2025, leaving us with approximately a year until we can enjoy the game. This has not changed since the last time we heard something about the game, and we should celebrate it: a delay a year before the game’s release is very common, and the fact that it hasn’t happened means that the development is stable and they are not encountering any kind of production problem that needs to be addressed radically.

The CEO of Take-Two, Strauss Zelnick, in an interview with CNBC talked about how to decide the release date of a game, shedding light on how they do it. For example, deciding what number of bugs are reasonable in a bug at the time of launching the game, since perfection is something more subject to subjectivity than objectivity.

Here come the bad news

These statements were the preface to something that may give us a 2025 less celebratory than we expected. And a 2024 darker than it already is. While announcing that GTA6 continues its progress without issues, Take-Two also announced that it was closing Private Division, its indie video game publishing division. Having published great successes like Kerbal Space Program 2, OlliOlli World, or Penny’s Big Breakaway, this feels like a great loss for the diversity of video games. And what reasons have they given for closing this publishing branch? Not that it didn’t make money, but that it didn’t make as much money as they wanted.

This sets a terrible precedent that could well end up affecting GTA6. Rumors about the budget being handled for the game suggest it might be the most expensive game in history. And it’s not far-fetched. With the massive success that was GTA5, it’s expected that the expectations of executives and investors for GTA6 are sky-high. And this could mean that GTA6 might become the best-selling game in history and at the same time, the biggest failure in history for not meeting its publisher’s expectations. A fear that becomes even more real, seeing the latest moves by Take-Two, and makes us worry about the health of the industry.