With the recent launch of Red Dead Redemption 2 on PC, Rockstar Games is currently under criticism for its crunching practices, forcing employees to work massive hours to get the game out on time. They have reportedly accepted all this criticism and have made a lot of changes to improve the working conditions of their employees - this includes their later approach to the development of Grand Theft Auto 6, Rockstar's next big game.
Based on a new insider report, the next GTA game from rockstar would be of "moderate size" on release. With GTA 5's biggest appeal being the size of the map and how players interact with it, this is not a good sign for the sequel. They also mention that more updates would come later to expand the world further, but considering what they did with GTA 5 and GTA Online, these content releases would take quite a while. The goal of this change in policy is to mitigate the crunch and stress of its employees. This is not good for players however, as they would have to wait for much longer to get their money's worth.
The reason behind this event is probably the departure of Dan Houser, the co-founder of Rockstar who was in charge of some of its past titles. This guy was really hard to deal with - as he very often requests last-minute overhauls and rewrites of contents that would require the development team to work excessive hours.
While the game is halfway done, it is still nowhere near the release date. Based on various indications, we would have to wait until at least 2022 to get the first glimpses of the game. About the settings of Grand Theft Auto 6, with each previous GTA games focused on a fictional decade of US history (GTA 3, Vice City, San Andreas are the 70s, 80s, and 90s respectively, with GTA 5 being the 21st century), it can be expected that the game would be slightly futuristic.
Interested in more of our articles related to GTA? Please check out this post: GTA 6 launch date: Release date, rumors, leaks, location, characters and more