GTA 6 review embargo: when GTA 5 and Red Dead 2 reviews ran

Rockstar Games let reviews of its last two major games run the day before release. IGN posted its Grand Theft Auto V review on September 16, 2013 at 14:00 UTC, for a September 17 launch, and its Red Dead Redemption 2 review on October 25, 2018 at 11:00 UTC, for an October 26 launch. GTA 6 arrives on Thursday, November 19, 2026, 63 days after September 17, 2026.

The studio staged the 2013 sequence itself. Its Newswire ran a review round-up that same September 16, and it opened like this:

“With the countdown to the September 17th arrival of GTAV now being measured in mere hours around the world, here is the first round-up of reviews from across the web.”

IGN’s 10 out of 10 sits in that post with its link, next to The Guardian’s 5 out of 5, which went up at 19:00 UTC on the same day, plus scores from EDGE and CVG.

Five years later the hour was published in advance. Push Square wrote on October 16, 2018, citing Metacritic: “reviews for Red Dead Redemption 2 will run from 4AM PDT on 25th October. That’s a day before Rockstar’s hotly anticipated Western is scheduled to release.” The timestamp on IGN’s review, 11:00 UTC on October 25, 2018, lands on that 4AM Pacific slot.

Going further back, the gap is not always one day. IGN’s Red Dead Redemption review is stamped May 17, 2010 at 15:34 UTC, the eve of the May 18 North American release. Its Grand Theft Auto IV reviews went up on April 25, 2008, four days before the April 29 worldwide launch that Rockstar Games had set in January 2008.

Game	First IGN review	Launch
Grand Theft Auto IV	April 25, 2008, 20:43 UTC	April 29, 2008
Red Dead Redemption	May 17, 2010, 15:34 UTC	May 18, 2010 (North America)
Grand Theft Auto V	September 16, 2013, 14:00 UTC	September 17, 2013
Red Dead Redemption 2	October 25, 2018, 11:00 UTC	October 26, 2018

A preview is a different exercise

Everything published on August 27, 2026 came out of a hands-off session. The July 2026 press event at Rockstar North in Edinburgh ran without a controller in any guest’s hands: journalists and creators watched a Rockstar developer play in front of them, MP1st reported on August 19, 2026, and the embargo lifted at the exact hour of the Netflix premiere. Pure Xbox headlined “the first hands-off previews” on August 27, 2026, and what the invited press saw covers those sessions in detail.

A review works the other way round: a playable build sent out before release, and enough hours with it to finish the story. Insider Gaming said on October 14, 2026, in a story picked up by GameSpot the same day, that GTA 6 reviews “will go live before the release on November 19,” keeping the date to itself because it is “subject to change.”

That day on ResetEra, insider NateTheHate answered the question of press copies: “Not yet but they will before end of the month.” On October 26, 2026, NateTheHate posted on X that the codes are out, and put a date on the embargo: “Rockstar Games have begun to distribute review code of Grand Theft Auto 6 to media outlets. Review embargo is November 18th.” RockstarINTEL picked the post up the same day. No hour is given.

If the insider is right, critics get 24 days with the game before launch, and GTA 6 follows the GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 pattern of reviews on the eve of release. As of October 26, 2026, Rockstar Games has published neither an embargo date nor a schedule for review copies.

The Newswire is where those hours appeared

The October 25, 2018 post about the Red Dead Redemption 2 launch update also carried the lift times for live-streaming embargoes, according to GamesRadar+, so reviews and streams travelled as two separate permissions published on one day. That same GamesRadar+ article signed off with “Check back later today on GamesRadar+ to read our full review!”, and it broke the news of the day one patch, 3.30GB on PlayStation 4.

Two GTA 6 dates are already fixed by the Take-Two press release of June 24, 2026: preload opens on November 12, 2026, and the unlock follows on November 19, set out in the November 19 timetable. Rockstar Games ran its own press round-up at both previous launches, and the Red Dead Redemption 2 one is still up on the Newswire.