I’ll try to analyze this in the best way possible while also giving room for people to discuss this themselves in the comments. I won’t spend way too long on everything as part of the fun of all of this is researching stuff on your own.
VI’s origins definitely do extend beyond when the development started, they likely wanted to do certain things or ideas for V or even IV but they kept it for a later date.
|PRE V|
The earliest ever mention of VIs development was a note passed around the upper circles of the GTAF community, made in 2012, shared back in 2016. I’ll just copy and paste this very old explanation of this topic by nikhil on the VI discord:
“Multiple insiders in the GTAForums publicly discussed an old document they got their hands on. Yan, Tez2, Ash were some of the people who had the document. One insider mentions that the document was written by none other than the "top dog at R*" (Sam Houser) back in 2012 as an early idea draft. All of the insiders who were talking about the documents were reliable people from the Forums, including Yan and Tez2. It's possible the document is real, and there's almost nothing that makes it seem like a fake. Razed got the document in his hands in apparently 2013 and it had all the things that were planned by Rockstar in 2012, which included GTA VI being in pre-production.Ash says it's not going to be Vice City, while Yan and others say the document did mention Vice City.”
On Sep 9 of 2012 this subreddit would be made. 8 days prior to GTA Vs launch.
On December 14th of 2012 Leslie Benzies in an interview with Digital trends says that in the future Rockstar games would like to have their map contain all the cities they created over the years and let the player fly between them one day. He also claims that revisiting Vice City in a modern day rendition in a future installment would feel odd since it was tied to the 80s Miami aesthetic: https://www.ign.com/articles/2012/12/14/rockstar-wants-to-put-all-grand-theft-auto-cities-in-one-game
|POST V|
On October 3rd of 2013 Leslie benzies would claim that: “We’ve got about 45 years worth of ideas we want to do”, And that “We don’t know what GTA 6 will be, but we’ve got some ideas.”: https://www.ign.com/articles/2013/10/03/gta-6-and-beyond-rockstar-has-45-years-worth-of-ideas
This would be the first publicized instance of someone at rockstar mentioning VI.
During Red Dead Redmeption 2s developments early period they had already outlined the characters and the location. According to Stephen Totilo of Axios while responding to Jason Schriers original article on the Bonnie and Clyde dynamic and the expanding map he claimed that the games original vision was going to have 4 playable characters and 3 cities: https://x.com/stephentotilo/status/1553014737755115521
On September 1st of 2014 Leslie Benzies would take a two year long sabbatical and then leave the company in January of 2016. He would later claim that he was influenced into taking that sabbatical and he would get into a legal battle with studio over unpaid royalties. He had butted heads with the houser brothers over the years with the housers more or less wanting to make movies as games and Benzies wanting more of a focus on the online aspect of gaming. His departure lead to others leaving in protest, ironically enough this all led to GTA Vs story dlc being scrapped which I guess played out Benzies vision after all.
On August 3rd of 2015 Breathecast reports that VI’s playable characters would be played by Ryan Gosling and Eva Mendes. The only reason I bring this very old and niche report up is because they were somehow on the right track even though they were very obviously wrong in retrospect, Ryan gosling and Eva Mendes played the characters in the movie The Place Beyond the Pines who likely inspired Lucia and Jason’s character designs: https://www.breathecast.com/news/gta-6-rumors-rockstar-trying-to-get-eva-mendes-ryan-gosling-to-play-protagonists-in-upcoming-game.html
During 2016-2018 a couple of actors were found that had put VI on their own resumes, these remain a contested topic even today and have interesting implications on the development period.
On July 27th of 2017 an actor by the name of Tim Neff was found to be credited on both Red Dead Redemption 2 and Grand Theft auto 6, he denied involvement with RDR2 and claimed he had done work for GTA V, which was proven false when his name was found in RDR2s credits: https://gtaforums.com/topic/892711-gta-6-leaks-hints-topic/
On December 27th 2017 a member of GtaForums would find an actor by the name of “Jorge Consejo” who had put Grand Theft Auto 6 onto his resume having been credited as “The Mexican”: https://gtaforums.com/topic/892711-gta-6-leaks-hints-topic/page/9/#findComment-1070010396
During the rdr2 dev period in 2016-2018 the team working on VI was likely skeletal or non existent as they pooled all studios to work on rdr2.
On march 6th 2018 The Know now known as Inside Gaming would report the original project Americas leak, the leak said that the games codename was Project Americas, that it would be set in Miami/Vice city, that it will include portions of north and South America, that it will have at least one female protagonist, and their estimate was a 2021-2022 release date. ORIGINAL VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYqmedgub8s
This leak would NOT say that the game would take place in the 80s however they didn’t say what time period it would be. During the 2019-2021 period a lot of people would end up revisiting the original Project Americas leak and claim it to say stuff it didn’t. It was quite barebones.
SIX YEARS LATER after the death of Roosterteeth the person who had verified Project Americas for The Know would say that Rockstar ended up locking the studio down in reaction to the leak to try and find the mole. And that the VP of Rockstar at the time (Probably Dan houser) would end up contacting him to ask for the leakers identity, this was discussed in this video at the 28:30 mark: https://youtu.be/QvcupbDTjpg?si=LGdzP-6fLeMStbde
On October 24th of 2018, 2 days before RDR2s release in an interview with GQ Dan Houser would claim he would not release VI in the age of Trump: https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/red-dead-redemption-2-interview
|POST RDR2|
After Red Dead Redemptions 2s release Dan Houser would take a 2 year long sabbatical and then leave in early 2020, his contributions to the game prior to that are likely 10 years old at this point.
Rupert Humphries(hired for IV) would take his position alongside Michael Unsworth(also hired for IV) and Roger Drew, who had written for the tv show VEEP, and Luke Turton. With Unsworth as Vice President of Writing. Humphries as Senior Vice President of Narrative, and Drew and Turton as Senior Creative Writers.
It’s highly likely that Rockstar would start full production on VI after Red Dead Redemption 2s release in October 26th of 2018. This has been corroborated by others and there hasn’t been word on any other large project that Rockstar worked on in this period.
During the 2018-2020 period Manni L. Perez(Lucia) and Dylan Rourke(Best lead for Jason although it’s still debated) were likely cast as their characters, with Dylan listing as having been hired for a video game during June of 2019.
On October 8th of 2019 on this very subreddit a user would post a picture of a document supposedly sent from rockstars scouting team asking for permission to scout his business: https://www.reddit.com/r/GTA6/s/3ZqlpMkv8B
One of the people named on this document would later on talk about having been hired by a large company to scout various locations in the American south east: https://filmflorida.org/podcast/episode-16-leah-sokolowsky/
In December of 2019 references related to “Americas” were found in the RDR2 code, later on in 2021 people would find references to weapons in the game and a parchute likely used to test VI in rdr2. This indicates that both games were being developed alongside each-other for some period of time.
I would be hard pressed to call this a proper timeline if I ignore the most popular fake leak in VI history. A map would be shared online by a twitter account called 9teen8E5 on December 19th of 2018 https://x.com/9teen8E5/status/1075495119464345613
This map would be revised and updated by seemingly unrelated suspects to that original one. The map has been proven fake due to the original account being tied to a different account who faked involvement in gaming events. Also it doesn’t line up with our current map estimate as it cuts off where “Waining Sands” would be on our map concept. Still a very prominent fake leak and arguably the first of its caliber.
During the Covid Pandemic rockstar was obviously impacted, it’s likely that there were rewrites or stuff that got cut during this period which has been hypothesized to have included the South American areas of the map. Although this remains to be seen.
On march 25th 2020 large segments of the community would be disappointed after VIs trailer didn’t drop due to the enigmatic and mysterious “Preacher” claiming that it would. This would be the first documented r/gta6 trailer disappointment.
On April 15th 2020 Jason Schrier writing for Kotaku claims the game will be a moderately sized release and that the game would be expanded on later, To better combat crunch. he also claims that the game would suffer less last minute rewrites due to Dan Housers departure: https://kotaku.com/18-months-after-red-dead-redemption-2-rockstar-has-mad-1842880524
On October 14th 2020 Rockstar Games acquires Ruffian Games which is renamed to Rockstar Dundee.
During early-mid 2021 Tom Henderson, Known Battlefield and COD leaker would controversially claim that the game would be released in 2024-2025, that it’d include two playable characters, one of which being a female hacker, that there would be some sort of in universe version of Bitcoin, that it would be set in the modern day and that the online would evolve over time. Jason schrier would later corroborate Tom Henderson’s info. The Henderson information: https://youtu.be/b5kSp88_a2Y?si=m5GVaY8UDxk79cNd
Jason Schreiers opinion (original tweet is gone but it’s quoted in this post): https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLeaksAndRumours/s/LPR0apDXe6
On February 1st 2021 Rockstar Toronto would be broken into and robbed (not related to VI I just find it odd how people forgot about this): https://youtu.be/AZaie0rPXws?si=pj1nd9kO47u7qlTV
In march of 2021 we see the first mention of VI being in a bankrelease version in the 2022 leaks, which means that the game has been in that feature complete state for 4 years at this point.
On November 11th 2021 The Definitive editions would be released and met with harsh criticism. Later on people would discover that textures used in the remasters had been backports from VI: 1-https://www.reddit.com/r/GTA6/comments/1gr28ac/gta6_texture_found_in_gta_trilogy_update_files/
2- https://www.reddit.com/r/GTA6/comments/1h86sg3/another_gta_vi_texture_found_in_gta_trilogy_de/
The current hypothesis for why these textures are there is that Rockstars Indian branch was tasked with creating the textures for the games, community member BakeWithMe also known as Mors Mutal Insurance/MMI would claim that Rockstars India had been assigned to work on the Vice Beach area of VI: https://x.com/morsmutual_/status/1836408526069014669
On February 4th 2022 Rockstar officially confirms the existence of the next Grand Theft Auto installment: Newswire: https://www.rockstargames.com/newswire/article/ak73k92o47ko75/grand-theft-auto-community-update
Twitter post: https://x.com/RockstarGames/status/1489617718009606150
On February 10th 2022 an actor by the name of Guy. A Fortt is discovered by GtaForums member Kirsty, who had put “Grand Theft Auto 6” on his CV: https://gtaforums.com/topic/973963-the-grand-theft-auto-vi-leak-archive/?do=findComment&comment=1071793219
On June 2022 the first “Fireball” actors resume was found, a “Natonia Monet”. The Project Codename for VI is Americas, while fireball has been hypothesized to be the casting one.
On July 7th 2022 in a newswire post Rockstar Games would announce that they would be moving resources away from Red Dead Online to focus on “The next Grand Theft Auto entry”: https://www.rockstargames.com/newswire/article/9k74k52737912k/grand-theft-auto-and-red-dead-online-community-update
On July 27th 2022 Jason Scherier writing for Bloomberg claims that VI would include a female protagonist who is a Latina, who would be one of two protagonists in a Bonnie and Clyde dynamic and that the map was cut from the original north and South America plan to “Miami and its surrounding areas”: https://www.bloomberg.com./news/articles/2022-07-27/gta-6-release-date-rockstar-cleans-up-image-after-employee-backlash
On September 19th 2022 90 videos (40 videos in a white field and 50 on the actual map), a portion of code related to the ui, and two screenshots of an internal document would be posted on GtaForums by hacking group Lap$u$ member Teapot AKA Lily. Teapot would later be arrested for this leak.
The document is the earliest portion of the leak dating back to 2019 (the document itself would never be released in full). But the dev footage is actually from early 2021 up to the day of the leak. These videos were not considered early or pre Alpha but were internally referenced to as Bankrelease which would be between an Alpha and Beta state where that bankrelease version would be sent to rockstars QA team.
Teapot would later on that day sell the entirety of rockstars perforce servers contents for an ALLEGED 200k dollars. Which would later turn into the 2023 GTA V source leak.
It is ALLEGED that the VI source code is still being hoarded privately and it likely will never publicly see the light of day as it is a legal death trap.
If you wish to dig deeper into what was shown in the leaks without watching them directly you can check out The GTA VI document which explains what was shown and the various discoveries made over the years: https://t.co/A1hYxCa5F9
On that same day hours after the leak the first mapmaking version would be published by Dupz0r, which would be removed and moved to a more private operation. Which evolved into the current map making community.
On June of 2023 the actor for the DJ “Dre” seen in the 2022 leaks would be found with “Fireball name TBD” included on his resume, a “Reggie Taley” (im not sure who first found him or when they first did, it seems like it was either a VI discord or a GtaForums finding).
During late 2023 Michael Unsworth would leave rockstar, he would be credited as having had worked on VI on his LinkedIn. Humphries taking his position.
In October 2023 a user on r/gamingleaksandrumors would accurately predict Lucia being a convict and that she’d be released out on parole, he would also leak story elements and gameplay elements: https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLeaksAndRumours/s/mp9sX6zu7x
In October 2023 Deuxmoi reporting an anonymous tip would claim that a certain “bulbous” dj personality (very likely to be DJ Khaled) was contracted for “the biggest game ever” to do voice overs for it and had asked for the producers to double his pay, they accepted but asked him to do mocap. When he put on the suit he got really self conscious which ended up causing the deal to fall through: https://www.reddit.com/r/GTA6/s/TwY8xs8PE3
In October of 2023 Sam houser apparently flew out to the NYC studio get updates on the state of the game and to hire an advertising agency to put up mural, ads, and posters. This would be reported on by Rockstar Universe on November 8th of 2023. This report is odd in retrospect as no large advertising campaign ever happened post trailer 1 which either implies someone got the information incorrect or Sam Houser decided against it afterwards.
In the lead up to the first trailer for VI a user on this very subreddit known as u/well_look_whos_back would accurately predict the trailers theme, had his username be a line from the trailer, and he would also leak various gameplay elements: https://www.reddit.com/r/GTA6/comments/191zsew/the_mystery_of_uwell_look_whos_back/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3&rdt=64728
On 4pm EST November 7th 2023 community member Liam would imply that something big would be happening soon 12 hours prior to the bloomberg report: https://vxtwitter.com/billsyliamgta/status/1722004198571520338
On November 8th 2023 Jason schreier writing for Bloomberg leaks VI’s trailer announcement and claims it would come later that week and that the trailer would come the month after. Which is exactly what happened: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-08/rockstar-plans-to-announce-much-anticipated-grand-theft-auto-vi
On November 11th 2023 Rockstar Universe leaks certain controversial details which may be interpreted as spoilery in nature. It’s still unknown if his report was true or not. He did also share many details before and after that post which indicate that they’re struggling with hitting 60. That severe weather conditions were cut, that Luis Lopez would have some connection to the game, and that there would be two modes (performance and fidelity most likely).
On December 3rd 2023, days before the trailers release a person connected to Aaron Garbut, Head of Rockstar Games leaks a short video of VI onto Tikok. This person would later clarify they were NOT his son under that videos comments, which is a myth that persists to this day.
On December 4th of 2023 approximately 22 hours before the trailers release u/jarlofrivia would leak various details about the VI trailer and the games release date: https://www.reddit.com/r/LeaksAndRumors/comments/18aoif4/gta_6_trailer_leak/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
On December 4th or December 5th (depends on your timezone) of 2023 Approximately 16 hours before the trailers release a user on Twitter would leak the VI trailer in full in a highly compressed format with a large “BUY $BTC” overlayed over it. Approximately 1-2 hours after the leak Rockstar Games would officially release trailer 1 onto YouTube, becoming their most viewed video in under a day and breaking multiple records. The game is announced for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, with PC notably being absent in usual Rockstar Fashion.
|POST TRAILER|
On December 24th Manni L. Perez would be found on GtaForums and was pinned down as Lucia’s actress only 19 days after the trailer and 1 year and 3 months after her first appearance in the leaks: https://gtaforums.com/topic/994826-gta-vi-manni-l-perez-as-lucia/#comment-1072322156
On December 25th 2023 after teasing the community for days various people in the community would leak the GTA V source code which had been hoarded since 2022, the leak was partial and the entirety was never posted. The source code includes various references to AMERICAS possibly due to them testing it in Vs engine. They included references to lock-picking, a tiger, and Russian npcs.
There were also files related to motion capture alongside the codename “Meridian”, it was speculated then as it continues to be now that it is the motion capture codename for VI, with the game being associated with 3 different codenames for different departments:
Development : Project Americas Casting : Project Fireball Motion Capture : Project Meridian(?)
This lines up with past games which had different codenames for different departments.
On December 25th 2023 a GtaForums user puts forward Dylan Rourke as a possible candidate for Jason. the first ever instance of anyone mentioning Dylan Rourke as a potential: https://gtaforums.com/topic/985662-gta-6-actors-and-actresses/page/43/
This lead would later get popularized by community member Legacykillahd on May 4th of 2024: https://x.com/LegacyKillaHD/status/1786820963885019571
On January 15th 2024 T-Pain, who is very involved in the RP scene, would “leak” his involvement with VI on twitch, it’s still up to interpretation if he was messing around: https://www.reddit.com/r/GTA6/s/06XuXJFIEA
On February 28th 2024 Jason Schrier writing for Bloomberg would report that rockstar had asked their employees to return to work in the office as they were gearing up for the games release to better combat leaks: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-28/-grand-theft-auto-maker-tells-staff-to-return-to-office-five-days-a-week
On April 1st (yes April first) of 2024 a user on GtaForums leaks the logo used for the holiday party rockstar had done in December 2023, he also makes claims about the game and doxxes his supposed friend in that post: https://gtaforums.com/topic/996500-r-north-physics-programmer-leaks/
On september 7th 2024 a member of the band heaven 17 would turn down an offer to include their song temptations on the VI radio after claiming the amount offered was too little: https://www.reddit.com/r/GTA6/s/iptiYONDpw
On September 9th 2024 leagcykillahd would leak various story and gameplay aspects on his twitter page after the community starts to clown Liam for infamously getting a fake delay leak: https://x.com/LegacyKillaHD/status/1833191000543506604
On September 17th 2024 files related to VI would accidentally be added via a GTA V update, these files seemed to indicate them already working on a pc version at the time. As they were Profile Save files which would be saved onto your documents folder.
In November 14th of 2024 a one year old financial report document was uncovered that claimed that VI had licensed the song “Private Life by The Pretenders”, if true this is the ONLY time that rockstar has reused a track that was in a previous GTA game, with this one originally being in Vice City Stories, Document(ctrl+f for Grand Theft Auto and you’ll find it): https://www.hipgnosissongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/HSFL-AR23-web.pdf#page=29
Song: https://youtu.be/ql4QYQCBYAo?si=bPMgVIAjAr8NHXkt
On October 1st of 2024 community member Nuro claims that VI would include “a Vault Heist, first mission is a penthouse shootout”. He also claims that the ending was rewritten in 2024 and says the game is on track for a fall 2025 release, this remains to be seen: https://x.com/Nuro_Citrix/status/1841206129046454663
On January 1st 2025 a Reddit user would post 2 videos and 1 photo of VI at rockstar San Diego. Onto r/gamingleaksandrumors. The footage itself was taken in June of 2021. This likely places it as the first ever actual intended legitimate leaked footage of the game due to the 2022 leaks having been filmed by Devs.
On March 3rd of 2025 Rockstar Games acquires Video Games Deluxe which is renamed to Rockstar Australia.
I have left out various dubious leaks I think aren’t too interesting, and other ones confirmed fake, I’ll leave these up to you to discuss.
