The Daily Populous Tuesday January 20th, 2026 night edition
Authored by eurogamer.net and submitted by ControlCAD

Rockstar has helped a terminally ill fan play GTA 6 ahead of its November release date.

In a heartfelt plea on LinkedIn, developer at Ubisoft Toronto, Anthony Armstrong, reached out to colleagues and peers at Rockstar about a month ago to ask if they could help a member of their family who had been given "the worst possible news", and could may well lose their battle with cancer before the highly-anticipated sequel release.

"To any of my connections at Rockstar Games and Rockstar Toronto, or anyone else that may be able to help. A member of my family who has been battling cancer for years just recently got the worst possible news, he was given 6-12 months to live," Armstrong wrote in a now-deleted post (thanks, Insider Gaming).

"The reason I'm reaching out is that they are a huge GTA fan and, with this latest updates [sic], he may not be around long enough to actually get to see GTA6 launch, best case scenario he will be leaving us the same month it does. He currently lives only a stones throw from the Oakville studio, so its my hope that one of you may be able to set up an exclusive playtest, so he can have a chance to experience the game, before passing.

"I absolutely understand the need for secrecy at this point of development, so at the very least an NDA is probably needed. If anyone could send me a private m[e]ssage about this or provide any contact who could point us in the right direction, please do."

Rockstar Games accepted a terminally ill fan’s wish to play GTA 6 early after a family member publicly shared his story. pic.twitter.com/xIyBqMhRX7 — GTA 6 Countdown ⏳ (@GTAVI_Countdown) January 18, 2026 To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Manage cookie settings

Fast forward a few weeks, and Armstong was able to provide an update: "The CEO of Take-Two reached out and we are just waiting to hear from the Rockstar team to discuss this further. Thank you to everyone who has shown support, reshared, and reached out to your contacts for us."

The final update said: "We spoke to them today and got great news. That's all I can really say, but thank you all from the bottom of my heart".

Last November, Take-Two Interactive published its latest financial report, revealing GTA 6 had been delayed from 26th May, 2026 to 19th November, 2026. According to Take-Two, this delay is designed to give "some additional time to finish the game with the high level of polish players expect and deserve. Rockstar has our full support, of course, and we are confident they will deliver an unrivalled blockbuster entertainment experience".

canyoukenken on January 19th, 2026 at 15:31 UTC »

Doesn't really cancel-out the union busting they've been doing though.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp89990rgdno.amp

MissSephy on January 19th, 2026 at 13:50 UTC »

I see Rockstar are trying to regain control of the narrative after sacking staff for attempting to unionise.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp89990rgdno.amp

yermommy on January 19th, 2026 at 13:33 UTC »

If things do take a turn for the worst, maybe Rockstar will add an NPC modeled after him. I know Blizzard did this for a terminally ill fan back in the early days of WoW.