GTA 6: Five Mistakes Rockstar Absolutely Must Avoid
You Learn Better from Others’ Failures Than Your Own
December 2020. I install Cyberpunk 2077 on my PS4. First cutscene: the framerate tanks. First mission: an NPC walks through a wall. First drive around the city: the game crashes. I turn off the console. I didn’t touch it again for a year.
That memory belongs to millions of players. And it should haunt Rockstar Games every single day of GTA 6’s development, because the mistakes to avoid are right there, well-documented in recent gaming history.
Here are five major mistakes Rockstar cannot afford to make. Some come from the competition. Others come from their own playbook.
Mistake #1: Shipping the Game Too Early (The Cyberpunk Lesson)
This is the most obvious lesson, but it bears repeating.
CD Projekt RED was on top of the world. The Witcher 3 had propelled them to the most respected studio in Europe. Cyberpunk 2077 was the most anticipated game of the decade. And they shipped it in an unacceptable technical state. On PS4 and Xbox One, it was barely playable. Bugs were everywhere, performance was catastrophic, and promised features were missing in action.
The result: millions of refunds, a six-month removal from the PlayStation Store, and a reputation built over ten years destroyed in a single week.
Rockstar has already delayed GTA 6, from fall 2025 to November 19, 2026. If that delay prevents a catastrophic launch, it’s the best investment they could possibly make. A game that ships buggy can be patched. Player trust, once broken, takes years to rebuild.
Mistake #2: Abandoning Single-Player for Multiplayer (Their Own Mistake)
This one is Rockstar’s own doing.
GTA V shipped in 2013 with an exceptional story mode: three protagonists, a gripping narrative, a world of staggering richness. The community was waiting for single-player DLC. It was planned. It was even announced.
It never happened.
GTA Online was printing money. Shark Cards were generating colossal revenue. Multiplayer DLC was cheaper to produce and more profitable. The solo experience was sacrificed on the altar of profitability.
Players haven’t forgotten. With GTA 6, Rockstar needs to prove that story mode is an absolute priority, not just a gateway to sell the multiplayer. If the single-player feels like an afterthought designed to funnel players toward the online component, the backlash will be fierce.
Mistake #3: A Predatory Online Economy (Also Their Own Mistake)
GTA Online’s economy became, over the years, a masterclass in organized frustration. The most fun vehicles cost tens of millions of in-game dollars. Earning that money through normal gameplay took dozens of hours of repetitive grinding. The alternative: buy a Shark Card.
The system worked financially. But it made the game deeply unequal and frustrating for players who refused to pay. Lobbies became toxic, dominated by players wielding military vehicles capable of obliterating anyone with a single click.
For GTA 6 Online, Rockstar needs to find a balance. Monetize, yes: a live-service game needs revenue. But without turning the game into a machine designed to extract cash from wallets. Cosmetics, narrative content, well-designed battle passes, there are models that work without alienating players. Fortnite proved it.
Mistake #4: Launching an Empty Online Mode (The Red Dead Online Lesson)
At launch, the multiplayer mode for Red Dead Redemption 2 had genuine potential: an online Wild West, roles to play, a gorgeous world to explore with friends. Rockstar never gave Red Dead Online the attention it deserved. Updates were scarce, content was thin, and in July 2022, Rockstar effectively abandoned the mode with a farewell message to the community.
The message to players was devastating: if a game doesn’t generate enough microtransaction revenue, it gets dropped.
For GTA 6, the online mode must launch with a solid foundation, not an empty shell with promises of “content coming soon.” Players no longer trust promises. They want substance on day one: diverse activities, a functional economy, and a credible content roadmap.
And above all, Rockstar should not repeat the disaster of GTA Online’s 2013 launch: two weeks of burning servers, connection errors, and lost save data. In 2013, that was forgivable. In 2026, it would not be.
Mistake #5: Underestimating the Power of Expectations
This one is more subtle, but perhaps the most dangerous.
GTA 6 is the most anticipated game in history. That’s not hyperbole, it’s a measurable fact. Trailer 1 broke the YouTube record for most views in 24 hours. Google searches for “GTA 6” dwarf those of any other game. The anticipation is nuclear.
When anticipation reaches this level, disappointment becomes structurally possible, even if the game is excellent. People aren’t comparing GTA 6 to a normal game. They’re comparing it to the idea of GTA 6 they’ve built in their heads over twelve years, and that imaginary version is perfect by definition.
No Man’s Sky lived through this in 2016. A decent game at launch, but so far below the absurd expectations that it was received as a disaster. It took years of updates to rehabilitate both the game and the studio.
Rockstar needs to manage expectations: communicate clearly about what the game is and what it isn’t, and not let the community get carried away with features that don’t exist.
The Verdict: Rockstar Holds All the Cards
Every mistake worth avoiding is already documented, analyzed, and well-known. There is no excuse for repeating them.
Will Rockstar dodge all of them? Probably not entirely. No launch of this magnitude is flawless. There will be bugs, servers will buckle, mechanics will need rebalancing.
But there’s a real difference between an imperfect launch and a disaster. Rockstar, with its track record, its resources, and the twelve years it has had to prepare this game, has no structural reason to fall into the same traps as everyone else. The one risk that’s harder to quantify: whether the confidence that comes from producing the best-selling games in history becomes a blind spot. That’s the mistake none of the documentation can prevent.