Even GTA's Original Creators Haven't Played GTA 6

Jones and Baglow spoke to the BBC at Abertay University in Dundee, the city where DMA Design made the original Grand Theft Auto in

1997. Jones helped invent the series; Baglow wrote and publicised the first game. Both are now watching the launch from the outside: Rockstar has given them no early look at the new game, and Baglow has simply pre-ordered a copy like everyone else.

The wait has been a long one. Grand Theft Auto VI arrives on November 19, 2026, thirteen years after Grand Theft Auto V, following two delays and several high-profile leaks. Rockstar has kept the project tightly under wraps, and the secrecy has only added to the anticipation. Pre-loading opened on November 10, with the game taking up about 212GB, and both PlayStation and Xbox have said it is the most pre-ordered title in their digital stores' history.

The series began far from the scale of today's blockbusters. DMA Design had just found success with the puzzle game Lemmings when the team started experimenting with a racing game first called Race'n'Chase. The idea that defined the series came from letting players step out of the car, steal another vehicle and continue on foot. The team also considered letting players take on both sides of the law, but dropped the police side quickly, because playing by the book would have limited what players could do. Playing the villain became the heart of the game.

Success did not arrive overnight. Jones described sales of the first game as a slow burn compared with Lemmings, driven by word of mouth through its first year. Its criminal themes stirred controversy, including debates in the UK Parliament and calls for a ban, although it later emerged that much of the uproar had been stirred up by the game's own publisher, BMG Interactive, as a marketing stunt.

Guardian video games editor Keza MacDonald described the series as deeply satirical, taking aim at the hyper-individualist and hyper-capitalist character of the United States, while keeping a distinctly Scottish sense of humour and an outsider's view of American life. The new game introduces two protagonists, Jason and Lucia, with Lucia set to be the first playable female character in any of the three-dimensional games. It launches on November 19 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, with no PC version announced.

The men who created Grand Theft Auto are waiting for the new game just like everyone else, one of them with a pre-order in the same queue as millions of other players.