Grand Theft Auto VI will have a pretty good shot at being one of the biggest launches by any piece of entertainment, ever - given that the sales of GTA V make it basically the most successful thing since sliced bread.
However, even after dropping a trailer that broke countless records for views in its first day, week and month, Rockstar Games is still keeping its lips sealed about an actual release date for the much-anticipated title.
The blockbuster trailer, which features so many moments to pick apart and analyse if you're a mega-fan, ended with the promise that GTA VI would arrive in 2025.
Since then, people have been desperately trying to figure out if there's a way to tell when in 2025 it'll come, with little success.
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Now, a job advert has been spotted that people think might point the way. It's a listing looking for a Localisation Tester who speaks Russian. This would be someone to check through translations and localisations for Russian speakers.
The interesting part, though, is that it's for a 12-month fixed-term contract, which has set some observers into overdrive.
They're arguing that this means a March 2025 release date is a distinct possibility, since this would make sense in terms of that contract running out.
A Reddit post pointing out the job listing has picked up lot of comments as people debate the likelihood of all this, unsurprisingly.
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The top comment in the thread is clearly won over, saying: "You might be cooking", while another response is a little more expansive nothing: "Good find. Many others on here will dig too deep in on mundane stuff but this one actually has some weight behind it."
However, it's worth pointing out that this isn't necessarily a slam dunk.
As another commenter counter-argues: "It's better to contract someone for a year and re-up if you need them longer than it is to contract them for 24 months when you only end up needing 12."
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This correctly susses out that a 12-month fixed-term contract doesn't always get renewed on the exact same terms, so there's nothing stopping Rockstar Games from employing someone on this contract, and then offering them a further six months in order to get through to a slightly later release date.
So, while this might be a sign that the game is heading into the final stretch for localisation and polish, it doesn't factually give us that much more to go on than we already had from the 2025 estimate.
Given Rockstar's famous attention to detail, too, there's still a decent chance that the game actually ends up getting delayed out of 2025 at some point.
We hope that doesn't happen, obviously, but where gaming releases are concerned it can be useful to be pessimistic!
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