GTA 6 PC port and generative AI piracy concerns, Digi Mart USA News: GTA 6’s PC release may come sooner than anticipated, according to former Rockstar North technical director Obbe Vermeij. He says Rockstar and publisher Take-Two may be concerned about losing money to unofficial generative AI clones of the PS5 version, which launches on November 19.
Vermeij said that avoiding having games duplicated by AI tools is “the big question” right now for developers and publishers, particularly those who cannot enforce their intellectual property as aggressively as Take-Two does for Grand Theft Auto. Speaking in a wide-ranging interview, he reflected on early Grand Theft Auto development at Rockstar North in the 1990s.
Vermeij recalled that the original GTA 1 was developed for PC first, with an external company in Dundee handling the PlayStation version. He said the PlayStation version was reportedly cut down in ways that upset the art team, though PlayStation versions sold far better than PC versions at the time.
When development of GTA 3 began, Rockstar reversed that order and created console versions first. Vermeij said most publishers prefer to release all versions at once, because it means paying for only one marketing campaign, but GTA has long followed its own approach because the game is so large.
Vermeij said generative AI tools such as Reverse Engineer Anything make rapid unofficial ports of console games to PC possible, despite warnings from experienced recompilation developers that such methods undermine the community aspect of unofficial porting and produce hard-to-read “bruteforce” code. “It really has changed the world,” he said, adding that he would be concerned if he worked at Rockstar that someone might use AI to convert the PS5 version to PC.
Vermeij said he believes current generative AI tools are “probably” capable of producing a port of GTA 6, though the process would take a long time and could cost tens of thousands of dollars in tokens. “If it’s GTA, I think people are gonna try it,” he said.
The source reports that efforts have already emerged to enhance GTA 6’s PS5 trailer footage using a PC graphics card and Nvidia’s DLSS 5. Vermeij, who left Rockstar in 2009, is now an indie developer working on the early access project Plentiful, which uses AI-assisted machine translation for localization but not for gameplay content, art or audio.
Vermeij said he does not see how the threat could be fully protected against, but suggested a large company such as Take-Two could pursue legal action, while acknowledging that AI may not produce a particularly strong result for a large game. “It’s a brave new world,” he said.
The latest rumors place GTA 6’s PC release in early 2027. Separately, Rockstar staff are set to formally vote on whether to seek union recognition, which could cover nearly all of the company’s UK staff below management level.
