The Grand Theft Auto 6 Price Nightmare Continues to Get Worse

Neither listing is currently available for purchase. Both are tagged "Coming Soon," with options to set purchase reminders but nothing more.

So what does this actually mean? Probably nothing. Probably everything.

The honest answer is that Loaded does this all the time. The site regularly posts estimated prices for upcoming games well before publishers announce final pricing. It has a listing for State of Decay 3 right now, a game that barely even has a release window, priced at £19.99. These are placeholder figures designed to generate interest and early traffic. However, the reason this particular listing has gone viral outside of the obvious reason being that it's the next Grand Theft Auto, it's because the number is awfully close to what a lot of fans have feared for months.

This is a valid concern, especially when you note what Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has actually said on the topic, which is a whole lot of carefully worded nothing. When pressed about pricing during Take-Two's most recent earnings calls and media appearances, Zelnick has repeatedly fallen back on the phrase "delivering value", insisting that Take-Two uses "variable pricing" and will set a price that reflects the quality of the product. He has never confirmed $70, $80, or $100. He has never denied any of those figures either.

That silence is loud, and Zelnick clearly enjoys the ambiguity. The good news? Take-Two priced Mafia: The Old Country at $50, a full $20 below the current AAA standard and $30 less than what Xbox and Nintendo now charge for their flagship releases. At the time, we noted that while Rockstar obviously isn't going to sell GTA 6 for $50. Even so, this is a positive sign. It suggests Take-Two is at least thinking carefully about price sensitivity rather than blindly chasing maximum revenue per unit.

Then there's the Obbe Vermeij angle. In a January 2026 interview with GamesHub, the former Rockstar North technical director was asked directly whether GTA 6 would be the game to break the $100 barrier. His answer was blunt: "Rockstar haven't said anything about $100. This is just something that the internet has decided." Vermeij went on to explain that Rockstar's priority would be maximizing the player base for the next Grand Theft Auto Online, not squeezing an extra $30 out of every box sold. The logic tracks. GTA V launched at a standard price and went on to generate billions through its online component over the following decade. Raising the barrier to entry would directly undercut that model, which is not what Rockstar wants to do even if analysts will tell you otherwise.

But Vermeij also offered a caveat that tends to get lost in the discussion. He called GTA 6 "the most expensive game ever developed" and suggested it would hold that title for years.

When the production cost is rumored to be in the vicinity of $2 billion, someone at Take-Two is absolutely doing the math on how to recover that investment.

With that said, we do know that marketing for GTA 6 is officially starting this summer. Zelnick confirmed as much during Take-Two's Q3 FY2026 earnings call, telling investors they would be "astonished" by the creativity of Rockstar's marketing team. Pre-orders are widely expected to go live around the same time, which means the pricing question will be answered definitively in a matter of months, not years.

Until then, a £89.99 listing on a third-party key reseller is no more than a number on a screen, even if the anxiety it's triggering is very real. Nine months out from the game's November 19, 2026, release date, and after two delays, fans are no longer just asking whether the game will be good. They're asking whether they'll be able to afford it, which is a problem Rockstar created for themselves by staying silent so long.

When you refuse to tell people what something costs, they'll fill the vacuum with their worst assumptions. A placeholder price on a key reseller site shouldn't be news. The fact that it is says more about the state of GTA 6's rollout than any leaked price tag ever could.