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As we get closer to GTA 6‘s launch with no PC port in sight, it’d be understandable if you were wondering why Rockstar Games is choosing to ignore such a massive chunk of fans at release, especially when it seems very likely to bring the game to the platform eventually. Well, according to one Rockstar veteran, the studio isn’t opposed to releasing games on PC – it just might not be worth the time or effort when it could be focusing on something else first.
Speaking in a new interview with Reece ‘Kiwi Talkz’ Reilly on YouTube (below), former Rockstar Games producer John Ricchio – who worked at the company between 2003 and 2014, and is credited on GTA 5, Red Dead Redemption, and Max Payne 3 – discusses the GTA developer’s approach to PC ports. He notes that, although it’s “less fashionable” in the games industry now than it once was, it causes many “problems” to start development on PC and then move to consoles afterward. “You’re much better off starting with the constraints,” he adds, because “shrinking is a lot harder than extending.”
While this certainly influences Rockstar’s approach to PC ports, Ricchio explains that it’s also often about prioritizing the devs’ efforts. When it came to Red Dead Redemption, for example, Ricchio says “we actually got a PC build running very early” to see how long it’d take – something that might come as a surprise given that the game’s eventual PC port arrived a whopping 14 years after its initial console release. But, as the ex-production dev says, “It’s not even that we don’t care about PC. It was just like, is it worth spending time getting a PC port going versus working on GTA 5?”
According to Ricchio, it’s “always those conversations” that drive the PC plan at Rockstar – the studio isn’t “anti any platform.” Regardless of the platform, it’s about whether it’s “worth spending the time and effort to get something running.”
In the past, there have been “a lot of cases” of “legitimate hardware limitations” – something Ricchio admits is less of an issue now that consoles like the PS5 and Xbox Series X are “definitely closer” in power. But, the point remains – “if you’re working on that, you’re not working on something else usually. Are you spending money on that? You’re not spending money on something else.”
Ultimately, then, Ricchio says, there either “has to be enough of a business reason to do some of those ports,” or the port has to be “super easy to do,” which it “rarely” is because “there’s always something that you gotta do.”
So, I guess if we’re not getting a GTA 6 PC port at launch, maybe it’s because the devs could be busy working on Red Dead Redemption 3, or – wild as it is to even imagine at this point – GTA 7? Regardless, hopefully PC fans won’t have to wait too long for the game to make its way to Steam – it took GTA 5 over a year and a half.