GTA 6 Is Making You Work for Stolen Cars

Stealing a car in Grand Theft Auto has taken about as much effort as opening a door for two decades now. Walk up, hold a button, drive away. In Grand Theft Auto VI, that stops working on a lot of cars.

Rob Nelson, co-studio head at Rockstar North, told IGN the studio has "put some layers of stratification into the vehicles." Before, "you could just press triangle to automatically hotwire and steal any vehicle." Now certain parked cars stay shut to you "until you get a bit further along with the story and you acquire certain tools to get into them." Carjacking is untouched. In Nelson's words, "You can always carjack any driver you see."

What happened this week

Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look premiered on Netflix on Thursday, August 27 at 3 p.m. ET, then went up on Rockstar's YouTube channel and the Grand Theft Auto VI site at 9 p.m. ET the same night. It runs about 26 minutes, and Rockstar says all of it is in-game footage captured on a PlayStation 5.

The rest of the week's details came from somewhere else. Creators and press sat through hands-off sessions at Rockstar North in Edinburgh, then published their impressions once the Netflix video went out. Keep those two piles separate. One is Rockstar showing you footage and answering questions on the record. The other is people describing what they were shown, from memory, without a controller in hand.

The car tools

Nelson's quotes are the confirmed part. The mechanics underneath them are thinner. Engadget, writing up that IGN interview and the preview material around it, reports that different vehicles want different methods: cars with electronic key fobs need a cloner, cars with GPS may require you to hold a certain speed to avoid tripping detection, and an in-game phone app tells you which tool a given car needs and what it's worth.

Rockstar has not put any of that on the Newswire. Treat it as preview reporting until it does.

If it works, a stolen car becomes a decision rather than a reflex. Nelson's stated goal is that you care which car you take instead of grabbing whatever is at the curb. The risk cuts the other way, though. Friction in a getaway is only fun when the game is clear about which cars you can actually take, and checking a phone app during a six-star chase does not sound like a good time.

The 80 hours is one person's playthrough

The number that traveled furthest this week is 80 hours. It came from Nelson telling the New York Times that his own playthrough ran about that long, covering the main story plus some optional goals with narrative consequences. He also built the game and knows where everything is.

Rockstar has not published a campaign length. Nobody outside the studio has finished the game, because nobody outside the studio has played it at all. The Edinburgh sessions were hands-off. So "over 80 hours" is a data point from one developer, reported by one newspaper.

The tidy version of the math is $80 for 80 hours. Rockstar confirmed the $80 standard edition price back in June. It has never promised the hours.

What else the video showed

The 26 minutes were built to show range. A drug dealer's apartment gets raided. Jason and Lucia hit shops and convenience stores. There's a six-star police chase, a fan boat, a nightclub, base jumping, a private plane, a shootout at a corporate gala, bullet-time aiming, and some very ugly close-quarters melee. It ends on a montage across Leonida that includes a chihuahua in a purple tutu with fairy wings.

What's locked in

November 19, 2026, on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, $80 for the standard edition, single player at launch. Those come from Rockstar. The hour counts, the app details, the security tiers, and the map comparisons come from interviews and previews, and some of them will move before November.

If you want one thing to watch between now and then, watch the car stuff. Rockstar has taken the most basic verb in the series and made it harder on purpose. That either gives the world some teeth or annoys you every ten minutes, and 26 minutes of trailer footage cannot tell you which.