GTA 6 is probably the most anticipated game release ever, mostly. Brandon Sheffield, responding on Bluesky to a Eurogamer piece about the death of the gaming industry as we know it, argues against the thought that the release of GTA 6 is the proverbial “shot in the arm the game industry needs.” And I do believe his point has some merit, though for different reasons.

‘GTA 6’ IS A GUARANTEED JUGGERNAUT

Let’s start with his first point, “I think the GTA delay is good for almost everybody making games. Nobody has to compete with them for mindshare in 2025.”

True, everyone is breathing a sigh of relief going into this holiday season. Now, instead of 100 men vs a gorilla, it’s a 30-man Royal Rumble for Christmas supremacy. A much more manageable battle. It’s tough on others when these big-event games touch down. How do you stand out amongst a game like GTA 6 that takes up so much of people’s bandwidth? Hope they buy your game, add it to the backlog, and don’t forget about it? Maybe. But then you’ve missed your word-of-mouth/review window for people to lock in. Some games catch that gust of wind on the back end, but not many.

So, I’m with him there. Everyone can lock in with relative ease and get their shots in. Though, Sucker Punch might have y’all by the neck with Ghost of Yotei anyway.

how does this help others?

Sheffield’s next point, “How does a GTA 6 release benefit any game company other than Rockstar? Trickle-down theory doesn’t work. I don’t care if ‘the industry’ makes $6[Billion], I care whether a wider variety of games sell.”

Jason Schreier would respond, saying, “Console sales for one, and overall industry growth, which gets investors excited.”

I think that on its face, what Schreier says is right. Kind of a “duh” situation. But I also think that it’s everything wrong with the gaming industry today. To piggyback somewhat off of the above-mentioned Eurogamer piece, why in the world are people who have no real care for what gaming is such a big piece of its continued existence? We’ve allowed the dorks with the calculators and wallets to have way too much of a say in how things operate here.

And that’s resulted in layoffs, an ever-shrinking journalism world, and hardship that doesn’t really need to exist. These folks will see a game do a million and go, “That’s not good enough.” Do you know how hard it is to sell a million of anything? Let alone something in the entertainment world. A game could be legitimately profitable, and because it didn’t hit some forecasted projection, it’s considered a failure, and entire teams are disbanded. People’s jobs are literally on the line because of someone’s “educated” guess.

Now, here’s where we diverge

His last point, “it will become another forever game like [Fortnite] that draws eyes away from new releases and becomes one of the only games the general public plays, to the exclusion of all else. Delay it forever as far as I’m concerned!”

Woo, buddy! Yes and no. GTA 6 will absolutely become the game that takes over a majority of the public consciousness for a period of time, and make it harder to squeeze yourself in. On the other hand, selfishly? Nah, let me get that. I don’t have that problem. Everything gets run in this house. But I do understand where he’s coming from. It’s hard for indie devs to get a word in when these AAA heaters come through the way they do. It’s a screwed-up situation to be in for sure. And one that there doesn’t seem to be a fix for any time soon.