'We're all still hungover': Ghost of Yōtei devs celebrated GTA 6's delay, which freed them from impending doom—'That was a great day'

GTA 6 may just be the most anticipated game release of the last decade (sorry, Silksong) as players have been waiting what feels like a lifetime to get the chance to drop into Rockstar's next instalment. But as player excitement swells, the closer we get to GTA 6's release, so does some developers' anxiety.

In an interview with MinnMax (via VGC), Ghost of Yōtei creative director Nate Fox was asked if the dev team celebrated at all when they heard about GTA 6's delay, to which he replied: "We're all still hungover. Multi-month hangover. That was a great day."

It's no secret that GTA 6 isn't worried about competing for players' attention—a former GTA dev even joked that GTA 6 has "no competition" and so can release whenever the developers see fit. But the same can't be said for all the other studios releasing games in and around the next year.

A Bloomberg report from a year ago uncovered how developers were hanging back on announcing release dates in anticipation of GTA 6 because they wanted to avoid the original Fall 2025 window like the plague: "They're determined to keep their own games far, far away."

Some brave developers didn't shy away from releasing games in Fall 2025, one of which is Ghost of Yōtei, which is set to release in a few weeks on October 2, 2025. But just because they were mentally prepared to duke it out with GTA 6 as best as they could doesn't mean developers Sucker Punch Productions weren't elated to hear the news of GTA 6's delay to May 2026.

There are no other major games set to release next May—so far. But there's plenty of time for another developer to step up to the plate and take on the monster that is GTA 6, although it probably won't be a pretty fight.