2025 will be remembered for one thing in the gaming world: Grand Theft Auto VI. This game is more than a decade in the making and is pretty much guaranteed to break every sales record you can imagine almost immediately on launch.
In true Rockstar Games fashion, we know very little about the game, at least officially. After dropping a trailer back in December 2023, the developer has been very tight-lipped about its latest installment.
That hasn’t stopped rumours flying around. The size of the map, game features, storyline, and characters have all been the subjects of speculation by fans who cling precariously to the edges of their seats in anticipation.
These are all standard topics of video game gossip, particularly in the run-up to the release of a new Grand Theft Auto title. However, one rumour has been circulating that is different to the typical guessing, one of cost.
For months now, journalists and fans alike have been talking online about news that Grand Theft Auto VI could be launched with a price tag of around $100.
A triple-digit price tag would make it significantly more expensive than other video games, at least for the standard variants.
In March 2025, gamers had their fears confirmed and surpassed. Brack, a Swiss retailer, briefly published a product listing on its website for Grand Theft Auto VI preorders. The associated price tag was 99 Swiss Francs, equivalent to around $112, £87, and €103 at the time.
Although this accidental listing was quickly removed, the cat was already out of the bag, and the Grand Theft Auto community was sent into a spin. It has led some gamers to speculate further, suggesting that this may be a watershed moment for gaming that will see other AAA games also cost this much in the future.
Is this going to be the case, or is this just another case of the giant vacuum left by Rockstar Games being filled with even more noise?
Changing Monetisation Methods
The way developers sell their video games has changed many times over the years, starting out as a pay-per-play model in arcades, where you’d have to physically insert coins to keep playing, before transitioning to a traditional retail model.
That retail model for offline games held from the 1980s to the 2010s before being disrupted by microtransactions and the free-to-play approach taken by many publishers.
At the same time, the iGaming industry has used a different monetisation model the entire time. Ever since the first ones launched in the mid-1990s, online casinos have used house edges and return-to-player rates as their form of monetisation, matching how physical casinos work.
Today, leading online casinos like PokerStars Casino offer hundreds of different online slots, including exclusive titles like Diamond Stars and Big Blue Bounty. Each one has its own unique theme, features, and mechanics, as well as a unique advertised RTP rate, which shows the average return players can expect when playing over a very long time. The small edge kept by the house is what covers the cost of running the casino, with the rest going back to players.
Microtransactions and the casinos’ RTP model have advantages over the retail model in that they cover the cost of ongoing playing. For modern games, this involves maintaining servers, developing new content, and fixing bugs.
Whereas, a one-off retail purchase means publishers and developers need to create new games more frequently to cover the running costs, a feat that is becoming more difficult as games get bigger and bigger.
Will $100 Become the Norm?
With $100 video games a real possibility if Rockstar Games succeeds in charging this much for GTA VI, can we expect this to become the norm, and will this mean no more microtransactions?
If you’re not a fan of microtransactions, you might not be in luck. Record-breaking GTA VI sales, even with a hefty price tag, will encourage other publishers to push up their prices.
However, the microtransaction genie is out of its bottle, and there’s no way to put it back in. Particularly when we consider that these in-game purchases help to fund the on-going upkeep of games years after they’re released.
When you adjust for inflation over time, $100 is not an outlandish sum. However, it is a large amount of money to ask players to hand over, and some publishers may shy away from breaking into three digits for fear of alienating some more price-sensitive players.
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