Some chilling news has crept through the wire for those who prefer physical games or are starved for SSD space—apparently,
Grand Theft Auto 6 is due to launch as a digital-only title. This news stems from at least one European game distributor, who reports that Take-Two Interactive is not planning a physical version of the next
Grand Theft Auto game at launch, most likely as a way to prevent early leaks. A number of titles have been previously spoiled by retail workers doubling as leakers, since the games do need to be shipped and stored for the weeks ahead of physical release and are thus in a fully-playable form prior to launch. The length of the delay before a physical release is also in contention, with some sources saying the disc version will arrive within a month after release, or outright delayed until early 2027.
While a
GTA 6 file size screenshot that once suggested the game would weigh in at a sanity-altering 676.7 Gigabytes on Xbox consoles was found to be fake, the title is still expected to have an incredibly large file size. Relatively recent Rockstar releases, like
Red Dead Redemption 2, require some 150 GB of available space on PC, and even the likes of
God of War Ragnarok reaches a 190 GB file size on PC.
Based on what's known about its sheer depth and scale,
Grand Theft Auto 6 can reasonably be expected to break the 200 GB barrier, with 100-150 GB seeming highly unlikely without some outstanding file compression technology at work. This makes the lack of a physical version at launch even more of a pain point for players who own disc versions of consoles, though realistically it will have limited impact on an increasing base of cross-platform digital-only players. And, of course, it's
yet another delay past the already twice-delayed launch date of November 19th, 2026, at least for the disc-only players.
The original report, which stems from leaker Graczdari via
PPE.PL, is rather succinct in laying out the physical delay and why it's happening. Other outlets and commentators have been quite a bit more vocal, though, decrying it as a greedy move from Rockstar meant to exploit double- or triple-dippers likely to buy a console digital version, a console physical version, and eventually a definitive PC version. That's not a charitable way to look at the move; based on the lengths to which Rockstar has already gone to prevent leaks, including firing a large number of employees (
though the fired claim otherwise), preventing leaks is the most likely explanation.
