Could potential AI clones of GTA VI force a quicker official port?

Yesterday, when reporting on emerging efforts to pipe the console version of GTA VI through a PC’s DLSS-powered Nvidia GPU, we mentioned in passing that PC players could instead just wait for the AI-assisted decompilation port that will no doubt be coming in short order. Now, a former Rockstar tech director says he thinks that exact threat could cause the developer to work faster on the official PC version of its soon-to-release crime/lifestyle simulator.

Obbe Vermeij hasn’t worked at Rockstar since 2009, but in a new interview with Rock Paper Shotgun, he recalled how artists for the PC version of the original top-down Grand Theft Auto were incensed when the console version squashed the game’s 256-color textures down to 16 colors for the PS1 release.

“So it always has been that sort of awkward relationship between PC and the console,” Vermeij said. “So in those days, it was like PC first and then console second, even though that didn’t really make much sense for the sales, because the PlayStation versions sold way better.”

Those sales caused Rockstar to pivot hard toward the console side of the business, with oft-delayed PC ports of its major games only hitting many months or even many years after their console counterparts. It’s a trend that Rockstar has stuck with even as many formerly console-focused game publishers have started treating the PC as an equally relevant platform and as the line between PCs and consoles itself has gotten much fuzzier in recent years.

Time is getting short

The rise of AI-powered reverse-engineering tools—which can quickly turn a console game binary into easy-to-port raw code with incredible brute-force efficiency and minimal human effort—might change that kind of “PC can wait” calculus for Rockstar. “I think I would be concerned, if I was Rockstar, that somebody would just take the PS5 version and get AI to change it to PC,” Vermeij told Rock Paper Shotgun.

To be sure, decompiling a game as complex as Grand Theft Auto VI wouldn’t be as simple as, say, the previous human-led decompilations of early 3D GTA games. But even if an AI coding harness has some difficulty capturing all the details of GTA VI‘s advanced weather systems and scripted sweat simulations, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

Vermeij speculated that reverse-engineering the console version of GTA VI could cost “tens of thousands of dollars in tokens,” and a resulting port probably “won’t be as good as [Rockstar’s] effort” in the end. That said, Vermeij said it would probably be good enough to satisfy some potential PC players and that he “wouldn’t be surprised if there was an effort to get [the releases] a little bit closer together” to get ahead of that.

“What was the case before is that there’s so much effort in developing the game, that it is not possible to rip it off, and that’s completely changed now,” Vermeij said. “So, yeah, we’re going to have to see in the next couple of years how that’s going to pan out.”

While there hasn’t been an official timing announcement for the PC port of Grand Theft Auto VI, reports suggest Rockstar is currently aiming for the first quarter of 2027.

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