The hot news this week is the American election which was won by Republican candidate Donald Trump last night. As soon as his victory was announced, many video game players expressed their fears regarding Trump's desire to fight against video games and even ban violent games.
During his first term, Donald Trump had threatened the video game industry several times and had several times mentioned his desire to put an end to violence in video games. And precisely, Take Two Interactive, the owners of Rockstar Games (the developers of the next GTA 6) were particularly targeted. So, could the development of the next Grand Theft Auto be impacted by the re-election of Donald Trump?
GTA 6: development disrupted by Donald Trump?
In 2018, following numerous mass shootings and killings in the United States, Donald Trump summoned several major video game players at the White House for an exceptional meeting to address violence in video games. For Trump and his institution, violent content in video games was in largely responsible for this escalation of violence who pervert the young.
Take Two Interactive, Bethesda and Activision were then invited to this moment when Trump and his institution clearly called for regulation of violence in video games under penalty of putting in place measures which would aim to force studios to limit content in their games.
In 2018 and 2019, Donald Trump increased his speeches and threats against the video game industry. During a meeting, the American president declared: “We must end the glorification of violence in our society. This includes the macabre and grisly video games that are now commonplace. It is too easy today for young people in difficulty to surround themselves with a culture that celebrates violence. We must end this culture or substantially reduce it. And it starts immediately ».
In October 2018, for the release of Red Dead Redemption II, Dan Houser (who was the co-president of Rockstar at the time) said in an interview that he was relieved, in the political context of the moment, not to release the next opus of the Grand Theft Auto saga. At that time, GTA 6 had still not been announced. We now know that the Rockstar Games title was originally planned for 2023/2024 and that it was the Covid-19 pandemic which, in part, delayed the game.
Today, we know, GTA 6 is expected for fall 2025 on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. For his part, Donald Trump will have the right to his official inauguration in January 2025. Can we therefore fear for Rockstar's future game?
Normally, non. Currently, Grand Theft Auto VI East in the final phase of its development. That is to say that the entire game is ready and the Rockstar Games teams are in the process of fine-tune the last details and optimize the game so as not to have any bugs when launching it. This optimization phase is long and can take several months or even more than a year depending on the projects.
Therefore, there is a good chance that Rockstar anticipated Trump's possible re-election. It is certain that the game will not be never postponed for four years to wait for the end of Donald Trump's second term. The only risks we can fear is that laws or measures will be put in place by Donald Trump before the release of the game. Thus, the development of GTA 6 could take a few weeks late if certain content was problematic in order to be removed from the game.
Of course, this possibility remains quite lowbecause given the current geopolitical context, we hope that Donald Trump has other priorities than the fight against video games on American soil. On the other hand, the risk is present and the new American president has several times renewed its wish to continue the fight against the video game industry. If there are (normally) not too many risks regarding GTA 6 Today, we can be a little more worried for the future and the next games from Rockstar Gamesbut also most other American video games. To be continued.
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