GTA 6 reviews plan could throw GOTY race into chaos at The Game Awards

Last year, I noted that Grand Theft Auto 6‘s Nov. 19 release date, immediately before The Game Awards’ eligibility cutoff, had the potential to throw the 2026 Awards into chaos. It’s late enough to potentially play havoc with the TGA jury’s usual nomination deadlines.

New reports about how Rockstar intends to roll out GTA 6 suggest that this is exactly what’s going to happen. A report from Brazil makes the claim that Rockstar won’t distribute review copies of the game to press, but will instead indulge in the very late-2000s practice of controlled review events.

This is not how Rockstar handled reviews of previous releases like Red Dead Redemption 2. Nor is it common practice in games PR at the moment; after widespread debate (to use a polite term for it) about ethics in game journalism in the 2010s, review events quickly fell out of fashion. It would be an unusual move, to say the least.

But it is plausible, because Rockstar is evidently even more paranoid than usual about GTA 6 leaks. The game’s release strategy, with no physical edition being distributed at all and no way to play the game until digital copies are activated on Nov. 19, seems designed to protect against any possibility of leaks. No direct review code distribution to journalists or influencers would be consistent with that. (Polygon has approached Rockstar for comment but did not receive an immediate response.)

I was a frontline critic during the review-event fad, and played games like Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots and Halo 3 for review at events. Review events sound like integrity-compromising jollies; they were typically held at fancy hotels with food laid on, and in the case of MGS4, free massages were available to relieve the aches and pains of playing a game for three days straight. In reality, for jobbing critics, they were an annoying inconvenience and a terrible way to experience the game. I had to pull an all-nighter to complete Halo 3 and nearly never did because, in a sleep-deprived delirium, I spent the hours between 4 and 5 a.m. running around in circles in a room I couldn’t find my way out of. (In the game, not in the hotel.) Not that Rockstar will care — I suspect leaks matter far more to the studio’s bosses than reviews, and GTA 6 will break sales records however critics experience it (or don’t).

Here’s where things get interesting for Game Awards nerds, though. GTA 6 is the runaway favorite for Game of the Year 2026. But for the jury, the nominations phase typically happens in the first half of November, before the eligibility cutoff date. (Voting for the winners then follows at the end of November/early December.) If Rockstar pursues review events, very few, if any, critics will have played the game in time to nominate it.

Image: Rockstar Games

Mid-to-late November releases are relatively rare, and it’s generally assumed that early copies of those games will be made available to critics and jurors in time for nominations. But it does happen that eligible games are released but aren’t widely played enough among the jury to secure nominations, despite hitting big with critics and audiences. This happened twice last year, with Arc Raiders (released on Oct. 30) and Dispatch (episodic release between Oct. 22 and Nov. 12), which only secured one nomination apiece from the jury. These late-breaking viral hits just didn’t register with enough jury voters in time, so by the time nominations hit in late November, The Game Awards looked out of touch.

GTA 6 is very different; it’s not as if nobody on the jury sees it coming. But, if Rockstar doesn’t distribute review code, the net effect will be the same — very few jury members will have played it at the nomination stage. Jury members will be in the awkward position of taking it on trust from the lucky few who’ve played the game that it’s worth a nomination, and many won’t want to do that. But if GTA 6 is underrepresented in nominations and then a clear favorite when it comes to the winners’ vote after its release, that will be awkward, too.

The Game Awards’ voting dates aren’t set in stone, and the simplest solution would be for the organizers to shift them back. This would be tight before the Dec. 10 awards ceremony, but maybe it’s doable. The alternative could be for The Game Awards to appear completely out of step with the biggest event in video games culture in a decade.

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