GTA VI reviews will land before November 19, Insider Gaming reports, with press copies said to ship this month

For months it was almost taken for granted that GTA VI would hit shelves without any reviews ahead of time. A game this size, leaks arriving nearly every week, Rockstar locking down every video: the theory made sense. Let the press play it the same day as everyone else. According to Insider Gaming, that is not what will happen.

On October 14, the UK outlet reported that GTA VI reviews will go live before November 19. Writer Grant Taylor-Hill said they knew the provisional embargo date, the moment outlets are allowed to publish, but would not share it because it could still move. Hours later the article was gone. Notebookcheck was among the first to point out that it had been deleted. Insider Gaming has not said why.

The ResetEra thread that quoted it is still up. There, NateTheHate, the leaker who called the first trailer's date months ahead, added one more detail. Asked whether copies had already reached outlets, he replied: "Not yet but they will before end of the month." If he is right, the press would have the game about three weeks before launch.

What Rockstar's history says

Rockstar has confirmed neither the embargo nor the copies. What there is, is precedent. GTA V reviews went up on September 16, 2013, one day before release. Red Dead Redemption 2 did the same in 2018: reviews the day before. GameSpot, which picked up the story, cites both and points out that nothing forces Rockstar to repeat the playbook.

The doubt had a basis. In May, Brazilian journalist Pedro Henrique Lutti Lippe claimed Rockstar would fly reviewers to an undisclosed location to play there, with no copies leaving the building. With a world like Leonida, expected to be a good deal bigger than GTA V's, locking writers away for a few days sat badly with reviewing the game properly. Three weeks with the game at home fits a review that goes past the main story far better.

The risk Rockstar is taking

The timing is tricky. This autumn belonged to Cyberleek, who kept posting footage until announcing on October 14 that it was done, and GTA VI has no disc edition, which narrows the ways it can leak. Still, every copy sent to an outlet is one more door. Rockstar has spent years controlling every image of GTA VI, and shipping the full game to hundreds of writers weeks before launch is the opposite of that control.

There is a commercial angle too. The game has passed 6 million pre-orders according to Sensor Tower, but plenty of people are waiting to read how it holds up before paying $79.99. For them, reviews before November 19 change the decision. And for Take-Two, which reports earnings on November 9, a high score before then would be a handy thing to show investors.

What we know and what we don't

For now this is all third-party reporting, which is why we label it Report:

• Insider Gaming says reviews will go live before November 19 and that it knows the provisional embargo date. It pulled the article without explanation.
• NateTheHate says press copies go out before the end of October.
• Rockstar and Take-Two have not commented.
• The embargo date is unknown. If Rockstar repeats GTA V and RDR2, it would be November 18, but that is only a guess based on precedent.

If copies go out this month, the first signs will come quickly: outlets going quiet on the game, writers hinting they have "something" in hand or, at worst, more leaked footage. We will update this story once there is a date or Rockstar says something. In the meantime, the launch trailer is the latest thing Rockstar has shown.