When Rob Nelson, Rockstar Games' head of development at Rockstar North, told the New York Times his own Grand Theft Auto VI run took about 80 hours, it got us curious about how it stacked up against the rest of Rockstar's mainline open-world games line up. So, we did what we always do, and got comparing.
Taking advantage of player-reported averages from HowLongToBeat, we got a pretty good idea of how much content there really is in GTA 6 and how much more we haven't seen yet.
Rockstar's mainline open-world games by playthrough length
Rank | Game | Year | Main story | Main + extras |
|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Grand Theft Auto VI | 2026 | ~80 hours | Not yet reported |
2 | Red Dead Redemption 2 | 2018 | 50 to 51 hours | 84 to 89 hours |
3 | Grand Theft Auto V | 2013 | 31 to 32 hours | 51 to 55 hours |
4 | Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas | 2004 | 30 to 31 hours | 45 to 47 hours |
5 | Grand Theft Auto IV | 2008 | 27 to 28 hours | 40 to 41 hours |
6 | Grand Theft Auto: Vice City | 2002 | 17 to 19 hours | 24 to 27 hours |
7 | Red Dead Redemption | 2010 | 17 to 18 hours | 26 to 27 hours |
8 | Grand Theft Auto III | 2001 | 15 to 16 hours | 20 to 22 hours |
Released-game times are player-reported averages from HowLongToBeat.
From Grand Theft Auto III at around 15 hours in 2001, the mainline Grand Theft Auto titles crept up through Grand Theft Auto: Vce City, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Grand Theft Auto IV, and Grand Theft Auto V, each settling somewhere in the high teens to low 30s for the main story. Then Red Dead Redemption 2 pushed past past 50 hours and toward 85 when you include optional content and side missions. Nelson's 80-hour figure suggests GTA 6 reaches even further, possibly doubling that if you listened to him and took your time doing all the free-roam activities Vice City and Leonida has to offer.
Also, Nelson works at Rockstar North. He knows the game inside out, so his run is almost certainly different from what a first-timer will spend feeling their way through the game.
With that said, it's best to treat these numbers as more of a ballpark figure. Player times will swing hard depending on your playstyle and Rockstar designed GTA 6 to factor that in as well, affecting the relationship dynamic between Lucia and Jason.
So, how much you explore, the difficulty you pick, and whether you reply to Lucia asking you if you'd still love her she was still a worm in the middle of a shootout, all affect that number. Also, GTA 6's runtime is of one developer's single run reported to the New York Times rather than a player average. Rockstar has not issued an official length at all.
What the ranking really shows though is a studio that keeps asking for more of your time, and a fanbase that keeps happily handing it over.