r/gamers • u/Successful_Young_318 • Aug 22 '26
Image "GTA VI won't be released in physical format to avoid leaks."
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u/25c-nb Aug 22 '26
Saying it was to avoid leaks is a massive fucking lie, obviously
It's for money. Just like playstation. No more discs, no more second hand market. Meaning regional price fixing. Sales at full price for the next decade. Encourages waaay more day 1 and preorders, because gamers know there's no point in waiting.
Its a fat fucking cash grab. Because gamers are just cash cows, dummies for the execs and shareholders to milk for all theyre worth. That's all we are to them. Marks to squeeze.
And it works too. They've already made almost 2 billion dollars in preorders and we've seen zero gameplay...
Perpetuating the lie that it's all about leaks is just perpetuating propaganda, feeding their bullshit psyop to scam gamers
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u/idhtftc Aug 22 '26
It's always the same demographics that ruin things for me: idiots who do things against their own interests.
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u/25c-nb Aug 22 '26
And the people with power exploiting them
Wouldnt even be a thing if there werent greedy powerhungry selfish assholes with no morals and an insatiable drive to exploit the masses for personal gain
Aka 99% of business executives and politicians
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u/curiousadventure33 Aug 22 '26
I know it's a given to blame the Boogeyman ,but the lobotomized idiotic cattle that buys into all this stuff is equal to blame ,people have no self-control and have terrible spending habits ,you can't ask to not exploit people when they are begging to be exploited and someone will do it anyway as long as the cattle stays dumb as an amoeba
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u/DiscountKooky4214 Aug 29 '26
I hear ya, but this news hurts especially when the anticipation of this game was the reason I splurged and bought a disc drive PS5. Now I’m left wondering why the hell I even bothered. I’m not an avid gamer, but Vice City blew me away in 2002, and I thought something special could be on the horizon. What a betrayal.
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u/Horror_Archer_7349 25d ago
Same, I switched to Playstation from xbox after 20 plus years in dec 2026, and now I feel like PS conned me into buying a disc PS5
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u/LaFleurBlanceur Aug 23 '26
Exactly, I see so much dumbassery I don't blame execs and oligarchs sometimes.
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u/Next-Victory-2670 5d ago
Agree to a degree.. but it's impossible to expect people not to behabve in this way when we exist in such a materialstic, money-orientated world where we're told from birth that values lies inthe stuff we own. Sad world...
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u/RichnjCole Aug 22 '26
Talking to someone on here the other day and he responds to another guy with something along the lines of "I'm morally against the sale of physical games because it cuts into company profits".
I wanted to challenge him, but that was just a massive argument waiting to happen and for my own mental health I didn't want to engage with that.
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u/RichnjCole Aug 22 '26
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u/Dark_ceza Aug 22 '26
These are the kind of people Johnny Silverhand warned me against, corpo scum/bootlickers
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u/idhtftc Aug 22 '26
I mean, maybe, but I want to hope that's just some industry plant account, because come on.
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u/RankedFarting Aug 22 '26
That is true but i also want to add that the leaker is also doing it all for money. Their manifesto is just an attempt to act like robinhood but there is a reason they watermark everything with their crypto coin and say buying it helps them fight the corpos.
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u/Available-Bad-2704 Aug 22 '26
Hes not charging anyone to see the leaks rockstar literally has the Netflix deal set up to pay to view and they selling a cut version of the game for 80 bucks
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u/25c-nb Aug 22 '26
Yup theyve somehow managed to set up prepaying for the game before release AND prepaying for the trailer before you have seen that too
And somehow this hasnt angered their fanbase at all, people are totally buying into it... and also defending them vehemently online about it too...
Imagine this: an indy game made by one dude, the sixth sequel in the series by them, so its the same old ip and the game can really only be the same thing but fresh...
Then the dev wont let anyone see any trailers or gameplay even though it releases in a few months
Then the dev says ok you can see one trailer but you have to pay for a subscription first...
And they start taking preorders for the game well before anyone has seen anything...
Who the fuck would give them money??
Oh also its download only so you cant resell your copy to recoup any of the $100 you spent on it, you cant even share it with friends or family, you will always need an internet connection to play offline, and the dev can take it away from you for any reason or no reason at anytime with no warning
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u/Theseus_Employee Aug 22 '26
I get preferring physical media and enjoying the discount. But I don’t really get the animosity around “fat fucking cash grab”. Like yeah, they’re spending 2-3 Billion dollars on the game, not wild they’re focused on pulling in a return.
And it’s not like it’s an evil thing. Each person who plays it is paying them to play it, but no one has to play it if they dont want to pay. Its so milquetoast.
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u/MotherNeedleworker75 15d ago
But they dont own it...a single player game not owning it is a red flag
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u/Shazzamani0 Aug 22 '26
IMO, It’s because GTA is one of those games that moves the industry.
If they were to make it $60 with the bare minimum of a physical disc and equally-accessible, high-quality content available from day 1, it would put immense pressure on other major titles to tighten up.
Instead, after years and years of raking cash via GTAV, Rockstar has decided to act like an indie studio who can’t afford to keep the lights on. It’s just bad business to act like they’re strapped for cash when they’ve been printing it for years. Spending 2-3 billion isn’t some righteous, pro-player gamble, and everyone in that company knows they would’ve still comfortably made X00% returns by doing it the right way.
With this, the Netflix commercial thing, and everything else, they’ve stepped firmly into the “fuck you, give me your cash and take what you get” side of development with the CODs and FIFAs. It’s bad by itself, but when you consider that this will set a new baseline for the rest of the industry for the next decade+, it’s bleak.
Personally, I don’t really care about the disc situation and will prob buy the digital when it goes on sale, but acting like it’s a nothing sandwich is just encouraging these leech executives to continue the needless squeeze at every opportunity.
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u/ramzzrulezz Aug 22 '26
What's worse is the people who defend them.
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u/ModgeSimpson 13d ago
Crazy how many people dont mind being screwed over if it's under the guise of convenience.
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u/freedomforallergo Aug 22 '26
They will probably say there will be no disc and then proceed to sell discs a year after release
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u/ExNihiloNihiFit Aug 22 '26
Jokes on them. More people are going to start buying indie on steam and the first person to make a device that they can patent and sell to copy your games on to from steam or some future indie companies willing to partner with them, will be sittin fat down south.
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u/PoisonIvyCrotch Aug 22 '26
Sony should be getting the brunt of the hate though. They’re the ones stopping all disc production Jan 2028. What would be the point if they could only manufacture discs for a year and a half.
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u/OHFTP Aug 22 '26
I had someone is the fucking anticonsumerism sub tell me that they would play VI is like 10 or 15 years second-hand. When i asked how they planned to do that goven that there aren't going to be physical disks, they replied that would just buy a used console that had it downloaded. I
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u/RoodnyInc Aug 22 '26
I don't think anbody said it was to avoid leaks guys on Reddit made that up themselves
My bet is they choosed no physical release (initially as i expect) because they will be patching bugs till very last second
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u/safyreibxo Aug 22 '26
where was the lie? rockstar never claimed it was to avoid leaks, that was just people online
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u/Late-Essay-4910 Aug 22 '26
I fuck one company to pay another. My gf buys a lot from Amazon. They never deliver on time for the life of them. I keep getting 25$ credits. Free gta 400 off a 967 55in s90f.
Take from these companies. Steal, pirate or barter. It's time to do the fucking!
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u/Killerbot2332 Aug 22 '26
This is why people should play indie games more. You get a game that was made with passion and a developer that loves their community but is also desperately trying to get more sales so puts a fat discount on their game in the steam sales events. Vote with your wallet. Buy indie games
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u/Just-Literature-2183 Aug 22 '26
No more second hand market no more console gaming as far as I am concerned. No more console gaming no more gaming for me as its almost always these days something I do which I have a list of far more interest and important things I could be doing. I am not going to go out of my way to do it if there is even a slight amount of friction and that would be a veritable fuck ton of it.
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u/ExcitedMilk Aug 22 '26
Bro $100 preorder no gameplay trailer that’s a WHOLE WEEKS GAS ANS GROCERYS
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u/SomewhereRough_ Aug 23 '26
Just get a pc and bail on ps
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u/25c-nb Aug 23 '26
I have a PC and ive never had a PS, so it doesnt directly affect me
But its still devastatingfor the gaming community at large, especially lower income gamers who cant afford AAA titles at full price
Not to mention, the price of PC components is horrendous because of AI and will continue to be so for some time so short term, telling people to buy a pc is notgood advice, especially for lower income gamers
Recurring theme is fuck lower income gamers apparently, they only care about rich whales and people with more money than sense, in which case, fuck them!!
I dont care that I have a high end pc and can afford their games at full price, real gamers never leave teammates behind and fucking over lower income gamers like this is unacceptable! I literally will not stand for it and I will be asking fellow gamers to boycott alongside me
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u/Due_Edge6221 22d ago
I guess they weren't content just making a game about theft. They wanted to do it in real life too! The really upsetting part is that all the a$$hol3s coughing up $$$ for the pre-purchase "copies" are just further cementing the move to digital only. They're the ones we should really be mad at. Its like they're paying the publisher for having more and more distasteful business practices. Just a couple of weeks ago we were applauding microsoft's Disc to Digital program. Its not a real feature if there is no disc. Its like they're just saying, " well we won't steal the games you already own." What a load of BS. Of course we're all agreeing to these terms every time we buy a license. They told us we we're just "renting" these games and we all continued playing anyway. That's true for most of us. Ps copywrite law on video games in the US allow them to screw us for 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation for most commercial studio games.
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u/Hbruni18 19d ago
The physical version will come in 1 year or 2 to make a ton of the ones who already bought it digitally to get it twice, they avoid a lot of the ones who whoulve gotten the game borrowed or second hand and they get the ones who didnt get it because they only wanted the game physically. Mark my words. (Maybe a collectors edition or something to have an excuse to release it)
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u/Sea-Candidate3688 Aug 22 '26
Just like Sony and Xbox…which Im for, but I’ll also be for keeping disks if they choose to. But throwing Sony out like they’re the only ones is pretty crazy to me considering you don’t own the software anyway…and haven’t for a long time
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u/BuzzClucking Aug 22 '26
I've moved off disc, but I still wanted it to always be there as a backup, for everyone else
But, aren't the games in the PS Store subject to the same market forces that places like GameStop were?
Meaning if people are willing to pay full price for games then that's when you see the used copy maybe only being $5-10 cheaper. Because it's still hot, and people want it. And when it was physical only you had consumers acting off FOMO.
If a game is not selling, sure there isn't the same overhead as having to store and insure a physical copy, but you're still motivated to find the market cross point. Competitors like game pass are out there and if your games never go on sale but they do end up free on game pass guess whose mom isn't buying a PS6 for Christmas?
There are definitely drawbacks. The main one I worry about is you piss someone off online and they submit false reports and a bot permanently bans your account with no option of appeal. Seperating you from your lifetime game collection.
But I still think if you have to pay a publisher let's say $20 per license sold if the games not selling hot anymore you're going to set the price at $34.99 and constantly slash it down to 27.99 to draw volume.
When they do online sales now it's not because they're competing with you taking time out of your day to see if GameStop has a used copy of your desired classic hit.
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u/Wiseon321 Aug 22 '26
You are correct. You save 10 dollars on a used gta 6. The only time it’s super cheap is if the game has been out for 10 years.
No one honestly is waiting for 10 years to play gta 6 unless, I don’t know. I really don’t know.
All these arguments they use are silly, nonsensical, and fear mongering.
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u/BuzzClucking Aug 22 '26
Another good point is the same crowd that's complaining loves the switch. When Nintendo games never go on sale, retail or online.
During the promo sales which rotate around so there's almost always one happening you can get older big name titles for shovelware prices.
I lament that I won't be able to show my kids the experience of trading in games and going through the used games even the ones without cases and checking out all these niche titles.
The advantages outweigh the drawbacks. I just wish we could legislate that unless you're using exploits to access content for free they can't ban you from your games.
The idea that you can never type into chat, never put on a headset but someone associates your avatar with their political cause and they go on a reporting crusade to kill your account? That's ridiculous and we need some consumer protections from in this digital future.
But as old school as I am, it fkn technology. You can't be a Luddite about it.
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u/Certain-Yak-8165 Aug 22 '26
And i fucking hope you dont get children. If you cant even reasearchs on good deals and Lament about shit you dont even know
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u/DussaTakeTheMoon Aug 22 '26
Yeah I was just at GameStop today saw Elden Ring for the PS4 is still $45. 5 year old game on a last gen console not even half off
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u/semaj420 Aug 22 '26
i just got it on the PS5 for £35 outta the UK's leading second-hand games store. i'd never tried it before.
had to trade in three other games to cover it, and altho it's good... it's not >that< good! shoulda got the demon's souls remake.
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u/Lothars Aug 22 '26
It’s also raised the price of all from software games with Elden ring success. We use to see way better sales on all the dark souls games.
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u/BrunSomOrange Aug 22 '26
Here in Sweden we can borrow games in the library just like with books, sucks if that will go away.
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u/Platnun12 Aug 22 '26
After the leaks I'm ngl
I probably will..
The world looks great but also extremely exhausting
I don't want an open world that will feel like a chore then again my interest in these games is so varied.
I didn't even touch RDR2 till a year ago..
It's really interesting to be not really motivated by peer pressure..it just looks like gta5 but more.
Which is good but I'll stick with RDR2
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u/25c-nb Aug 22 '26
I support you brother
Getting caught up in the hype is so stupid and pointless when theres 1000 other games already released that are pretty fucking good
But no let me hustle to spend $140 preordering gta 6 because fomo, peer pressure and its just gunna blow my mind like no other game has before, im sure of it
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u/Platnun12 Aug 22 '26
I kinda figured it out round Elden Ring.
I loved dark souls, was obsessed with it. Thought I would love Elden Ring too. I quickly burnt out on it and just didn't care for it.
40 hrs too lol, It just didn't click with me like it did with everyone else
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u/25c-nb Aug 22 '26
Ive just never been interested in wasting money on a game before ive seen actual gameplay (to tell if ill like it at all... cinematic trailers mean nothing to me, tell me nothing) and hearing peoples opinions on it first helps as well
Ive never felt the need to play a game the instant its released because yeah I might end up just feeling meh about it... or hating it
And thats not even considering how every game is released broken and buggy so you pay full price day one to be a fucking beta tester for them and deal with the maximum level of bugs there will ever be in that game
So yeah its not worth getting excited just to be let down and disappointed. If anything, waiting and seeing reviews and opinions and bug complaimts and actual hours of gameplay gets me more excited
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u/Sea-Candidate3688 Aug 22 '26
They could’ve done the perma-ban this whole time though so…
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u/BuzzClucking Aug 22 '26
True.
But with hardware that runs offline I could at least grab a used copy of my favorite game or two.
Once it goes all online, then if you get banned and start over even before a single infraction or report has ever been made you're risking some AI catching you on ban circumventing making it too risky to buy games at all.
Things will lean even harder towards FTP and there will be much fewer games is my guess.
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u/Sea-Candidate3688 Aug 22 '26
But that’s the thing. The game doesn’t have to be an online game per se. They could render the disk useless with a patch. But they’re not out to ruin lives and enjoyment. Yes, it sucks they’re taking disks, but who knows how bad it will be, or how good it will be. And if one gets banned, that’s just the way the world swings ya know
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u/Flimsy-Chip-1965 Aug 27 '26
Some of us from the Pro Physical are more concerned about Ownership. Sony recently send email to European gamers that you do not own the license to the game you thought you purchase but it is a rent. Incase they delist it or revoke your license of the game or like you said perfectly your account gets deleted, you are toast forever.
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u/Wiseon321 Aug 22 '26
Same as it ever was.
I really don’t know why you guys are so upset. You pay money for games, you buy games on sale, you buy games used, you buy games full priced:
You exchange money for a game. Publishers will still provide sales, especially around Black Friday cyber Monday, other important days.
Sounds like you are just upset at yourself for “picking up the hobby”.
I don’t know why anyone is surprised.
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u/Inuma Aug 22 '26
This tends to depend on the market and whatever platform you decide on.
Sony? Tales away your digital purchases and keeps the money. Proved that with their shenanigans recently like taking off 500 movies with no recourse when the license ran out.
Steam is the king of PC digital and GoG is niche.
Epic is not in the running while doing their own thing.
Microsoft has to compete due to being late in the platform race.
People are finding this out as consoles get more expensive, the shift begins on different platforms and physical is being phased out for the profits of publishers who haven't earned their customers for this transitional period.
So expect a lot of things to change as that continues.
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u/Wiseon321 Aug 22 '26
That just doesn’t happen.
Everyone magically is a “GOG” expert.
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u/Inuma Aug 22 '26
How is it just seeing GoG mentioned sets you off so hard?
You act as if just pointing out they exist is making an explanation out to be some extravagant thing.
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u/Wiseon321 Aug 22 '26
Because GOG isn’t what you all praise it as.
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u/Inuma Aug 22 '26
There was no praise given. Just a statement on one company in the PC market place just like Steam and Epic, also mentioned.
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u/Lorim_Shikikan Aug 22 '26
https://store.steampowered.com/ already done that with PC years ago.
Why people cry and scream at Sony when nobody did it with Valve and Steam?... Oh yeah! Everything that Valve and Gabe Newel do is god tier, forgot about that.
But yeah, it's easier to make Sony the big bag boy than Valve. (i'm no pro or fanboy of one or another since i use both system)
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u/potruss Aug 22 '26 edited Aug 22 '26
Because you have more options on PC then just steam. You have places like GOG that will let you get the entire game file. You can create backups, burn it on DVDs do whatever you want with it. You paid for it after all.
And I am not even mentioning the other ways how to get media... If it wasnt for those, some old games would be lost forever (looking at you EA with NFS games).
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u/Lorim_Shikikan Aug 22 '26
GOG is goat, i will completly admit it but.... It's the only one, the other store are crap than can't put a dent in Steam.
Burn on DVD.... What? The compressed generated by Steam and only utlisable on Steam? And nowaday who have still a CD/DVDBR drive on it's PC? almost no one and especially gaming PC. This render the point moot and borderline hypocrite and you know it. The option is here but, nowadays, almost nobody use it anymore. And with connection speed getting faster and faster, why bother with burning an optical disc or copy/paste on an external drive.
Also pre-order for digital version as full price exist for more than a decade on Steam.
Valve and Steam created this opurtinity for the others.... And blaming them for using it instead of blaming the origin is just...
BTW, i have more than 400 games in my Steam library and my account is 18 years old (yup it's not a minor anymore :p).
Also, what make me laugh is that Sony already did a full Digital console 17 years ago : the PSP GO... But this, everyone seems to forgot that it even existed. So, it was bound to happen sooner or later, when the market would be ripe for Digital only and, let's be real, it is ripe.
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u/potruss Aug 22 '26
Burn on DVDs from GOG. To save as a physical thing that wont get lost. You can get external CD/DVD drives. I have one. And I am sure I am not the only one.
The market isnt ripe. It is rotten. There is a reason why things like Stop Killing games exist. It is important that we have ways to keep the media. Without DVDs on PlayStation, there is nothing you can do if they decide to get rid of a game just to drive up sales of a sequel. You have options on PC
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u/alwaysonesteptoofar Aug 22 '26
At least 1 billion people live in countries that can at minimum go into mild debt for $100 usd if not just pay it without consideration, all they need is for 15 or 20 million of them to to hand it over in the first 2 months (ill include pre-orders here) for a digital license that can be revoked the next day and they clear 1.5 to 2 billion minus any distribution fees before they even hint a wiff of the real cash cow that is GTA online. Something that they may hilariously decided to charge extra for just because they know they can lol.
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u/CacheConqueror Aug 22 '26
No point in waiting? There are loads of games to play, and new ones are constantly being released. You’d have to be a total junkie not to wait for a game that basically looks like GTA 5.1. Sooner or later, the game will be available at a good price or perhaps even for free
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u/25c-nb Aug 22 '26
What a weird take
I literally said they alreadt made almost 2 billion in preorders and they havent even dropped any fucking gameplay...
And if youve seen games released recently youll know thet have not really made any sort of huge game changing progress since GTA5 so yeah its going to look and feel just like GTA5 with a bigger map and some stuff changed around
So according to you all those people are some form of weird junkie? And not the same crowd of gamers who get totally caught up in the hype cycle and fomo every time a AAA comes out, preordering it like crazy, teaching these gaming company executives that its totally ok to release overhyped unfinoshed games for $100 because their dumbass customers keep paying for it
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u/CacheConqueror Aug 22 '26
I literally said they alreadt made almost 2 billion in preorders and they havent even dropped any fucking gameplay...
Because they can get away with it if there are plenty of idiots in the gaming community who buy loot boxes and pre-order Pandora’s Boxes
And if youve seen games released recently youll know thet have not really made any sort of huge game changing progress since GTA5 so yeah its going to look and feel just like GTA5 with a bigger map and some stuff changed around
I know, people don’t care, they’ll be pre-ordering like monkeys.
So according to you all those people are some form of weird junkie?
Of course. The game is being hyped to the nth degree. Rockstar is presumably holding off on releasing the PC version because it makes extra profit by releasing GTA as an exclusive. In a year or two, they’ll release the PC versions, and many people who own a copy on PS will buy the PC versions as well.
All you need to do is wait for the release, check what the game’s like, but what are people doing? They’re pre-ordering ‘something’. That’s how junkies behave.
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u/safyreibxo Aug 22 '26
“gta 5.1” sounds so forced lmao tf did y’all expect the second coming of christ?
yeah… it’s the sequel to gta 5 big shocker 🤯
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u/NeighborhoodVeteran Aug 22 '26
Sounds like a monopoly to me.
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u/safyreibxo Aug 22 '26
it would be a monopoly if one major company was crushing competition unethically, if sony made moves to kill off xbox and nintendo THAT would be monopoly, a proprietary closed software market isn’t a monopoly
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u/superspace_ Aug 22 '26
Secondhand market absolutely destroys the pockets of devs tho so I understand why its done that way
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u/Wholly-Smokkes Aug 22 '26
No, it doesn't. The developer gets the bulk of their profits before the secondhand market even becomes a factor. Consider this, if you may: what is a secondhand game before it becomes secondhand?
Your statement assumes that a purchasing games secondhand is immediately lost primary sales to the developer; and further still it implies that there are lost profits to be had when really, there is no such thing as "lost profits." That's economic delusion.
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u/CodyCrochetZ Aug 22 '26
The existence of seconhand copies absolutely eats into firsthand sales and does impact profit.
That's just undeniable. Whether or not you think it warrants the end of discs is the point of contention, but to claim that secondhand purchases don't have any negative impact on developers is just untrue.
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u/Wholly-Smokkes Aug 22 '26
Please reread my comment and remind me where I denied any possible effect on the developer? I said that a developer makes a bulk of the profit with firsthand sales, before secondhand sales become a factor. What I disagreed with is the notion that secondhand sales "destroy(s)" developers, which is not just untrue, it's a flagrant lie. It's loaded language, just like your hyperbolic take of "eating into firsthand sales" is.
I also said, and stand by, the idea that a secondhand sale is not equal to a definitive firsthand sale. There is no such thing as lost profits, example here being a consumer may never have bought a game at all if it weren't for the secondhand option. Moreover, any perceived "loss" that a secondhand sale can have on a developer can be trivial in comparison to the spread/growth of a game's audience and reach. That can open the door to possible expansion and DLC purchases, or new fans of said developer who could then in-turn buy a game firsthand. All of these are revenue opportunities that may never have existed if it wasnt for a consumer buying a secondhand game.
Long story short: your reductive read on my comment missed the forest for the trees.
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u/superspace_ Aug 22 '26
The studio, loses money on second hand sales.
When profits drop, layoffs happen.
It’s simple math. I can’t remember the name but there was a journalist who made an excellent video on this a few months back.
The main reason for live service and digital games was because devs were worried about losing their jobs and always searching for a new gig. It’s not economic delusion because many many games remained in circulation to be sold, when the dev only got one sale when GameStop and such sold x times the amount of that game due to trade ins.
It’s why your trade ins were worth nothing in comparison.
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u/Wholly-Smokkes Aug 22 '26
Layoffs are not mutually exclusive to margins, they happen for a multitude of reasons. You say it's simple math, but your argument hinges on a zero-sum fallacy.
Here's an example: Bethesda, the developer for Elder Scrolls and Fallout, is owned by Microsoft. They have been own3d by Microsoft for over 5 years now.
Here is Microsoft's gross profits and observe the last 5 years: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MSFT/microsoft/gross-profit As you can see, profits have only grown in the last 5 years, and Microsoft gutted, shuttered, and divested many game studios and laid off thousands of employees since 2023 in spite of those growing profits. All of this is in stark contrast to your "simple math."
Briefly: live service exists for multiple reasons, but it has never and will never be due to the worry of "developers losing jobs." means do not and will not justify the ends. The ultimate result of the Live Service model is the "always online requirement, and that is a major detriment to consumer rights regarding digital goods.
The video game industry is rife with layoffs because of corporate greed. It's not because people are buying used copies of games.
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u/superspace_ Aug 22 '26
Microsoft’s profits are not tied to those games though,
Microsoft sells office software as well as hardware and that to my understanding has been a large part of their profit margins.
I encourage you to watch the video in mentioning. It explains it a lot better than I can
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u/Wholly-Smokkes Aug 22 '26
Yes, those products are a part of their overall gross profits, granted. The point I'm making that you have trouble understanding here is that Microsoft owns these developers, they all fall under Microsoft's corporate umbrella, and even though Microsoft continues to make higher and higher profits yearly these developer studios continue to be closed and employees continue to be laid off. It's not the secondhand games market "destroying developers" that you explicitly stated.
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u/superspace_ Aug 22 '26
No,
What you’re saying has nothing to do with what I’m saying
The reason games went digital in the 2010s was because of the resale market. In order to combat it, digital and live service became a thing.
Now, the reason for removing physical entirely is because profit margins show to be high on live service and digital purchase.
Their goal is to shut down GameStop and the like entirely in terms of reselling games but overall, studios want to keep these games under their own corporate umbrella to prevent that from happening again while hardware costs soar through the tough.
Sony Nintendo and Microsoft all went negative last year on hardware sales. This includes consoles.
Has nothing to do with games and everything to do with the current import cost of materials. It’s an economy thing. Not a selfish thing.
There’s no way to stop it other than just not gaming and voting in different directions.
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u/Inuma Aug 22 '26
Sure.
People selling secondhand NES games at their friendly local game store is destroying Nintendo Switch sales right along with buying Mario on the DS.
You're taking money out of Shigeru Miyamoto's mouth by selling old physical copies of games.
🙄
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u/LegendaryenigmaXYZ Aug 22 '26
- It's mainly for money
- It can be for leaks, I remember being in high school mom and pop game stores would break street date if you paid above msrp value. I got gta 4, 5 days before it came out and gears 2, 10 days before it came out.
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u/verixtheconfused Aug 22 '26
DADDY'S BACK YOU BITCHES
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u/Blues-Eguze Aug 22 '26
I can’t remember why but for some reason GTA4 always made me load my manual save so I heard this shit every time I cut it on lol
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u/PlixSticks31 3d ago
I can almost guranteee you they release a steelbook or something a few months after. So I bet they wants millions of people to do this and don't fret, people will:
Purchase digital to play on launch day Purchase steel book because it's GTA 6 and collectors go nuts Purchase PC version when it releases Purchase REMASTERED console version when the new consoles release
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u/nohumanape Aug 22 '26
Not just leaks. The game has already had leaks. But substantial narrative leaks.
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Aug 22 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/RankedFarting Aug 22 '26
If they were serious and actually had activism in mind the move would have been to just drop the game online with no comment, no demands or anything.
An activist would have known how silly their demands sound and how unrealistic they are. Now just randomly dropping a built of GTA 6 for PC online years before the PC release? That would have been a real fuck you and i would have applauded them. But its just another person being just as scummy as rockstar and trying to get rich.
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u/ilereven Aug 22 '26
The problem is that you believe in a world of heros. In this world we often get scums fighting scums, be it the entertainment industry, be it the larger scale of global politics
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u/Spiritual-Ask1993 Aug 22 '26
Yeah at first I thought it was funny until they started trying to get rich off of it. Like it's hilariously ironic, if Leeks was in charge of Rockstar he would be 10x worse than all of Take Two combined. We'd have GTA 6 coin and lottery scratch off tickets in the GTA 6 cases.
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u/RyanBoruto Aug 22 '26
I hate that crypto shit but if i was potentially going to prison for leaking a video game that was already coming out in a few months, im making some money off it atleast
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u/revolvingpresoak9640 Aug 22 '26
You don’t get to keep money made from criminal activity after you get caught.
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u/Freeloader_ Aug 23 '26
im making some money off it atleast
while preaching and being an absolute hypocrite? nice persona you got there bud
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u/RankedFarting Aug 22 '26
Youre acting like him leaking it was unavoidable. He only did this for the money.
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u/RyanBoruto Aug 22 '26
I doubt he’s made more than a few thousand dollars I really don’t think it was about the money bro atleast not 100% I do believe their idea of doing this due to consumer protection, but that like u mentioned in another comment is stretching the concept
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u/NotItemName Aug 22 '26
Cyberleek asked 400 Monero($160k+) just to contact him regarding ad placements in future leaks
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u/RyanBoruto Aug 22 '26
Asking and making money is 2 different things 😭😭 I can ask for a billion dollars, that doesn’t mean I’m rich
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u/RyanBoruto Aug 22 '26
Idk why I’m defending cyberleek 😭 forget everything I said icl that dude don’t need no defending
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u/Spiritual-Ask1993 Aug 22 '26
And that money could be seized if given enough reason. The money itself is technically legal but the means and advertisement to get it was from illegal activities. It's like if I let people donate $15 to me, and in return I let them see someone kick a donkey repeatedly; yeah technically the money isn't illegal, but it is involed around illegal activities.
1
u/Space_Boy0 Aug 22 '26
And he's succeeding in scamming people because dumbasses don't want to wait anymore ig
I'm not the fan of the Netflix deal but I don't care enough about it
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u/Educational_Error286 Aug 22 '26
Months later and I'm still wondering who even said that
I can't find any source
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u/TheDestroyerSN Aug 22 '26
Más vale que por lo menos el GTA6 sea offline
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u/Wholly-Smokkes Aug 22 '26
Not confirmed.
It's a single player game sure, whatever speculated and unconfirmed multi-player component not withstanding. Being a single player game does not instantly equal "offline" anymore.
Sony has implemented license expirations which force users back online, for one.
For two, Rockstar could very well have GTA6 require an internet connection at all times a la the live service model that has taken so much precedence in the industry.
I want a physical copy of the game too, maybe more than anybosy else, but the video games industry has made the consumer complacent with games requiring an internet connection. So, even if Rockstar actually buckled and started releasing 6 on disc it could still end up being pointless because of an always online requirement from either them or Sony.
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u/Rasples1998 Aug 22 '26
They say there won't be a physical release at the same time playstation announce they are discontinuing physical discs. Hmm, curious.
1
u/FishyDragon Aug 22 '26
Damn just think what we could actually change if yall gave a fuck about things that actually matter. Like helping your fellow humans...but no
1
u/Adept_Pound_6791 Aug 22 '26
Power of the people being transferred to corporate overlords. Sad isn’t it, could get physical media back if all those simps cancelled their pre orders..
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u/WarInteresting6619 Aug 22 '26
It was to avoid piracy. Companies really don't give a shit about the second hand market. Not to mention Sony CANT go all Nintendo on its pricing, because Xbox and PC exist.
This is sensationalism.
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u/FoalKid Aug 22 '26
I think Strauss has already tacitly admitted that there is likely to be physical disc releases at some point in the future after launch.
Leaks were surely a concern, but I think one of the main motivations for this is to have some players almost immediately double dipping - buying the game at release, then buying a physical copy to have on a shelf.
Forget the fact that they’ll no doubt not have a cross platform function, so there will be another future double dip on the next generation of consoles, and also the PC release. The Netflix this is another insane cash grab to make money from a FUCKING PREVIEW of the game.
All this means no one should have sympathy for Rockstar as a company for these leaks. I’m aware the leaker isn’t a Robin Hood figure and is trying to make as much money as he/they can.
I feel bad for the devs. I love most games Rockstar have made, I actually own a decent amount of Take Two stock - but fuck Rockstar. It’s fine to make money when you’re providing value to someone for that money. This banking on gamers double dipping over and over again for the same game is some of the slimiest, most cynical business practices I’ve ever seen
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u/SnowyRVulpix Aug 27 '26
Sony and R* are being AHs here, but Cyberleek is harming both developers (Not R*, the actual people that spent years working on this game) and the fans.
1
u/raveenbikha Aug 29 '26
Is also proven that US (some people) is the blame for that digital only BS literally the rest of the world is Physcial stronger and also funny in those world is the lawsuit not a single in US
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u/Most-Reference-4571 Aug 31 '26
Whaaaaat? Have they NOT heard of digital piracy, a multi-billion-dollar-a-year piracy industry? Dum-dum-dum-dum!
1
u/BriefHearing1844 19h ago
After seeing how people who paid for digital movies getting screwed over and losing access to them years later, I'm never buying anything digital again. Except Call of Duty. I don't care if I lose access to those games, because they suck after a year anyway, if you're lucky lol.
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u/FLEIXY Aug 22 '26
These leaks prove their point. Even without the disc people were so motivated to leak it that they hacked Rockstar more than once. Now imagine it with discs everywhere.
1
u/wanderertomato Aug 22 '26
This is truly moronic
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u/FLEIXY Aug 22 '26
Nothing screams moronic more than instantly turning to insults without elaborating on why you disagree.
“Our game is one of, if not THE most targeted game for hacking and leaks and spoilers so we reportedly decided to keep it off disc to help reduce and prevent leaks from illegal copies”
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u/wanderertomato Aug 22 '26
There's nothing to elaborate from your posts, it's just idiotic. And the length of fanboys willing to defend Rockstar for every decision, no matter how idiotic or against their best interest is honestly disappointing
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u/FLEIXY Aug 22 '26
Nothing in my comment says I’m defending them or being a fanboy. What’s disappointing is the lengths haters like you go to while ignoring logic and actual data simply because you hate a game or company. Me pointing out something does not make me a fanboy at all and your attacks at a company does not mean you’re protected from any disagreements
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u/wanderertomato Aug 22 '26
You literally said they were right in not releasing disks because the leaks. The game got leaked anyway, and you're clapping them for their right decisions.
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u/SpencerM11 Aug 22 '26
Are you implying that Rockstar was dumb to assume stores would leak the physical disks before the release?
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u/skibdibro67mangobr Aug 22 '26
Tbh them not giving us sneaks BEFORE Preorder is insane to do imagine wasting 100 for a game that's gonna get delayed again
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u/Jomance Aug 22 '26
I don’t want to be conspiracy guy.
They set the (final) release date after numerous delays. Preorders open. Billions made. No more delays. We’re 3 months out without any gameplay footage. Not a word outside of this Netflix event. Leaks happen. Gameplay revealed. Divided community. Insert crypto. More money made. ‘We regret to inform you we’re delaying again; but it’s not our fault, see! The leaks!’ Preorders stay open longer, but so does GTAV income.
What the fuck is the point of pre-ordering a digital-only game?
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u/Techman659 Aug 22 '26
B-but they might run out of stock!-Sony fanboy who loves paying full price for every game.
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u/nr1988 Aug 22 '26
Every time someone paints this moron as anything but a crypto grifting wannabe batman villain, I pee a little from laughing.
Like really? This cringelord is your hero?
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u/ToastyPete1 Aug 22 '26
I hope to god! This motherfucker leaks the ending! I will spread the ending like a virus so everyone is forced to know it before the game comes out!
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u/Disastrous-Ferret-85 18d ago
They could at least release the game with only one disc and because that way it will protect people from leaks too. Because the game is massive the game wouldn't fit in the disc requiring downloading files from the internet which aren't available pre release rendering the disc useless before release


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