Interestingly AccNGT goes on to say that fans should be worried if the game is announced "this year / early 2022", which is the most surprising element of this particular report — Tom Henderson's leak, which has been broadly accepted as the most legit sounding one since Jason Schreier's confirmation, predicts an announcement and release years away, making this seem unrealistic.
We assume that the chaotic development means that the game is currently far from the premium quality fans have come to expect from Rockstar Games, and AccNGT implies that an announcement coming soon means the devs won't have time to fix it up — however, a ton of games arrive several years (or in extreme cases a decade) after initial announcement, and it can always get delayed if more time is needed; something Rockstar is known to do.
Odd timeframes for announcements aside, development issues surrounding GTA 6 are regrettable but not surprising, which is why we're inclined to believe this report despite our usual skepticism. Rockstar Games is a huge company with several studios, but they're keeping so many plates in the air at the same time that a brand new, fully fledged AAA project can't possibly be getting the attention it needs.
GTA 5 is getting its Expanded and Enhanced port in March, GTA Online is going standalone while receiving new DLC, and the company has diverted resources to fix The Trilogy — The Definitive Edition. While we have it on good authority that GTA 6 will be a smaller and more reserved game to curb crunch, and will cut multiplayer entirely thanks to Online going standalone, this does seem like a recipe for a troubled project.
Seeing as GTA 5 has been out since 2013, we're long since living the largest gap between numbered GTA releases in franchise history — if it's taking this long to put together a smaller and more reserved sequel to one of the most successful and popular games ever, then you better believe it when someone says it's struggling.
