Grand Heist City has launched inside Fortnite Creative as a free 12-player open-world heist game. JOGO Studios and creator Andre Rebelo are pitching it as a stopgap and low-cost alternative to GTA 6. The hook is short heist sessions in a city with adaptive police, but it still has to work within Fortnite Creative limits on scale, physics, and memory.
Eight months before Grand Theft Auto 6 arrives, someone has built a GTA-inspired open-world heist game inside Fortnite, and it is free. It supports 12 players across every platform Fortnite runs on, and its creator told Variety in no uncertain terms that if GTA 6 ends up costing $100, his game exists as a free alternative. Grand Heist City launches on March 14 inside Fortnite Creative, built by JOGO Studios, the development outfit founded by YouTube creator Andre "Typical Gamer" Rebelo.
Rebelo has over 15 million subscribers and got his start making tutorial videos for Red Dead Redemption. "I've been a Grand Theft Auto fan all my life," Rebelo told Variety. "I absolutely love the open-world concept. That's why part of my love for Fortnite is from games like Grand Theft Auto that really built up my gaming repertoire when I was younger."
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He went even further, saying:
We wanted to create a big experience, one experience that maybe people who are looking forward to Grand Theft Auto VI, they can play this in the meantime. Or if Grand Theft Auto is too expensive, maybe it does hit that $100 price tag, we have created a Fortnite-inspired Grand Theft Auto right in Grand Heist City.
The key art even features two characters sitting on a car in a pose unmistakably referencing the official GTA 6 artwork of Lucia and Jason.
JOGO Studios has a 50-person development team and has previously accumulated over 100 million visits across its Fortnite Creative experiences. The studio describes Grand Heist City as its "most ambitious project" to date. The base experience is completely free, while an optional battle pass costs 1,000 V-Bucks (roughly $8) and unlocks additional vehicles and weapons.
With UEFN creator payouts now exceeding $700 million, JOGO's COO Chad Mustard told Variety that the market is now "mature enough" to justify the approach, noting that 100% of 'in-island' spending currently goes to creators. Fortnite's sprawling and vibrant community fuelled content scene is in many ways what we assume Rockstar Games is planning to achieve in the upcoming game as well.
Gameplay-wise, the game drops up to 12 players into Pacific City, a sprawling urban map built in collaboration with KitBash3D, a company that provides 3D assets for Hollywood productions. Sessions revolve around planning and executing heists within a 15-minute window with AI-driven police that reportedly adapt to player tactics and a reshuffling city map built to prevent players from memorizing optimal routes.
Rebelo's comment about the $100 price tag is the line that will travel the farthest, and it connects directly to one of the most persistent anxieties surrounding GTA 6. The pricing question remains officially unanswered. Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter has publicly stated that they believe Rockstar could get away with $100, despite many fans feeling worried about that number.
However, former Rockstar technical director Obbe Vermeij pushed back on that number in our interview, arguing Rockstar would price it "cheap" to maximize the Grant Theft Auto Online player base. The uncertainty has created a gap that creators like Rebelo are now explicitly positioning themselves to fill, and he's doing it with Epic's financial backing.
Grand Heist City is not the first project to capitalize on the extended GTA 6 info drought. Other fans have been rebuilding GTA 6 locations inside Fortnite, and modders have spent years recreating GTA San Andreas inside GTA V's engine. The gap between Grand Theft Auto V and GTA 6 now exceeds 13 years and spans two console generations, which is enough time for an entire ecosystem of imitation, homage, and outright clones to flourish.
As for Grand Heist City, JOGO's previous Fortnite work has been popular, but there is a significant gap between a well-visited Creative map and an experience that genuinely competes for the attention of players waiting for Rockstar's next game. The adaptive police AI, the procedural map layouts, and the heist planning mechanics all sound impressive on paper, but Fortnite Creative has its own hard limitations on memory, physics, and scale that no amount of UEFN scripting can fully circumvent.
Still, the fact that a Fortnite creator is openly positioning a free game as a GTA 6 alternative, and doing so with a straight face and industry backing, tells you everything about where the market is right now. The GTA 6 information vacuum is so deep that other developers are filling it with products.
FAQ
What exactly is Grand Heist City?
It is a free Fortnite Creative game built by JOGO Studios. The pitch is an open world crime sandbox with heists, vehicles, weapons, and police pressure in a city setting inspired by GTA.
Is Grand Heist City a Grand Theft Auto Clone?
While it strives to be an alternative to GTA, players expecting a full Rockstar-style single-player world will likely find it much too limited. If you want the scale, systems, and technical depth of a standalone GTA release, Fortnite Creative is still a smaller sandbox.
What details make this more than just a GTA clone?
JOGO says the map is a large urban city, sessions support up to 12 players, police AI adapts to player tactics, and routes reshuffle so runs are harder to memorize. The studio also says this is its most ambitious Fortnite project.
