Rockstar Games Job Listing May Help Narrow Down GTA 6 Release Window

Highlights

A new job listing from Rockstar suggests that the localization work on GTA 6 will be completed in Q1 2025.
Some fans took this to mean the game could hit the market in the first half of 2025, but that’s far from a certainty.
While localization work is typically done near the later stages of game development, it’s rarely the very last item on a developer’s agenda.

A newly emerged job listing from Rockstar may have helped narrow down the Grand Theft Auto 6 release window, suggesting that the highly anticipated game could hit the market as early as Q2 2025. But even if Rockstar is indeed targeting that time frame, Grand Theft Auto 6 still has a chance to slip into the second half of 2025.

The sixth numbered entry in the iconic series was officially announced for the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S in early December. The long-awaited Grand Theft Auto 6 reveal trailer stated that the game is coming sometime in 2025, without committing to a more concrete release window.

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Rockstar Expects GTA 6 Localization To Be Done in Q1 2025

Three months later, the company alluded to some more specific market timing as part of a newly published job ad. The listing, first spotted by Reddit user TwistLT, describes an opening for a Russian localization tester at Rockstar Lincoln, one of the group’s three English branches. The ad explicitly states this to be a fixed-term position on a 12-month contract. Between the fact that Rockstar is currently wrapping up work on only one major project and its long-standing policy of involving all of its studios in its AAA titles, there is little doubt that the advertised position pertains to the development of Grand Theft Auto 6, even if the game itself is never mentioned by name.

The description of the job opening seemingly excludes the possibility of GTA 6 launching in Q1 2025, thus narrowing down its official release window by three months. Some fans have interpreted the listing as a signal that the GTA 6 release window could still fall in the first half of 2025, having speculated as much on social media. That is not necessarily the case, as even though localization work is traditionally done near the later stages of game development, it is rarely the last thing on any given studio’s agenda; the pre-launch period usually revolves around bug fixing and QA testing.

Mainline GTA Games Release Date History

Game	Release Date
GTA	November 28, 1997
GTA 2	October 22, 1999
GTA 3	October 23, 2001
GTA: Vice City	October 29, 2002
GTA: San Andreas	October 26, 2004
GTA 4	April 29, 2008
GTA 5	September 17, 2013
GTA 6	2025

Granted, the newly emerged listing does advertise an opening for a Russian localization tester instead of a localizer, indicating that the bulk of the localization work on GTA 6 may have indeed been completed by now. But even if Rockstar is indeed planning to have GTA 6 go gold in early 2025, it remains to be seen whether it can actually hit that target. Only one mainline entry in the series managed to launch in the first half of its respective year, and all have suffered at least one major delay during development.

Between that and the fact that the holiday season is inherently more lucrative for developers than any other time of the year, a late 2025 release still seems like a plausible prediction. The eventual announcement of the game’s console release date should help narrow down the timing of the GTA 6 PC port, which still hasn’t been officially confirmed but is expected to happen after the PlayStation and Xbox versions are out.