GTA 6 could reach PC sooner than Rockstar’s usual pattern suggests, because of the threat of unofficial ports built with AI, according to former Rockstar North technical director Obbe Vermeij. Speaking to Rock Paper Shotgun, Vermeij said that if he were still at the studio, he would be worried about “somebody” taking the PlayStation 5 version and getting AI to convert it. Rockstar has not announced a PC version of Grand Theft Auto VI, and its official site still lists the game only for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. The game launches on 19 November, less than two weeks away.
Vermeij knows the series’ PC history better than most. He worked at DMA Design and Rockstar North on Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City, San Andreas and GTA IV, and left the company after GTA IV. Since then, he has become one of the most quoted former Rockstar developers online, regularly answering fan questions on his X account. In August, he described the flood of GTA 6 leaks as a “nothing burger” that would not affect sales.
What Obbe Vermeij said about AI ports of GTA 6
This time, Vermeij sounded far more concerned about the effect on sales. He said an unofficial PC version made with AI “won’t be as good as their effort, but it could still also hurt their sales”. He also suggested that someone would almost certainly try, because “if it’s GTA”, people will take the shot. According to the interview, he estimated that converting a game of this size would take many hours of machine time and cost tens of thousands of dollars in AI tokens.
He was careful to say that he has no inside knowledge of Rockstar’s plans, however. Even so, he said he would not be surprised to see “an effort to get [the releases] a little bit closer together”. Vermeij also pointed out that Take-Two, Rockstar’s parent company, would have strong legal grounds to act against anyone who released an unofficial port. Take-Two has form here, having had the fan-made re3 and reVC reverse-engineering projects for GTA III and Vice City taken down in 2021 before suing their developers.
How long Rockstar has made PC players wait before
Since Grand Theft Auto III, every mainline GTA has reached PC some time after its console launch. GTA IV arrived on PS3 and Xbox 360 in April 2008, but did not reach PC until December 2008. GTA V took even longer, launching on consoles in September 2013 and on PC in April 2015, while Red Dead Redemption 2 followed in October 2018 with a PC release in November 2019. Vermeij has said before that PC was a much smaller priority in his era, writing that the PC market “was nowhere near as big as console at the time” in a post in September.
The wider worry about unofficial copies is already on Take-Two’s mind. This week, CEO Strauss Zelnick admitted that GTA 6 will be pirated, while arguing that the game’s size, modern console security and regular updates make it harder to copy. GTA VI’s PS5 download alone is around 210GB, and Rockstar confirmed in its Newswire post that pre-loading starts on 10 November. An AI port would have to work around all of that, which is why Vermeij expects any attempt to be both expensive and inferior.
What else Vermeij revealed about Tokyo and GTA 6 Online
The Rock Paper Shotgun comments were not Vermeij’s only interview this week. In a separate Q&A posted on X on Saturday by the account @andersonburak, he said Rockstar had often discussed setting a GTA outside America, with London, Moscow, Istanbul, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo all suggested. “The only idea that was seriously considered was Tokyo, but that didn’t happen either,” he said. He added that American cities had always felt safer, because players around the world already knew what they looked like from films and television.
He also said he was most curious about what Rockstar will do with the next version of GTA Online. “I’m wondering whether they’ll set up servers this time that allow hundreds of players to play at the same time, like in an MMO game,” Vermeij said. He added that this would definitely be his goal if he still worked at Rockstar. Rockstar has not revealed any plans for an online mode in GTA VI, which makes that question one of the biggest still hanging over the launch.
Vermeij is now an independent developer, and his own game is a long way from Vice City. Plentiful is built on a hexagonal map, and he has described it on X as more of a god game than a role-playing game, closer in spirit to From Dust. He also said he was “eagerly awaiting” GTA 6, and that he finds it exciting that the whole world will be playing the same game at the same time. Our GTA 6 release date guide has the full launch times for 19 November, when the game unlocks on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.
