“Grand Theft Auto VI” in new controversy: what has caused the anger of fans of the franchise?

The most high-profile case is that of “The Crew”, an exclusively online racing game developed by Ubisoft that stopped being playable after its servers were closed and that, in response to complaints from its customers, the company argued that they never owned the game, but only a license to use it.

Coincidentally, this was also the case behind the “Stop Killing Games” initiative which required companies looking to abandon their titles to create offline versions or provide the tools to third parties to keep them running on other servers.

But returning to physical games, they have another much simpler and more practical advantage, the fact that if you have physical ownership of a copy of a game, you can do whatever you want with it, be it lend it to a friend, trade it for another, or even sell it to another interested person.something impossible to do with digital copies, despite some anemic attempts by Nintendo to do so with its digital cartridge system.

The controversy over the lack of discs in physical copies of “Grand Theft Auto VI” has been such that two American stores, Loot Box Gaming and Video Games Plus, have refused to sell copies of the long-awaited video game.

“We are closely monitoring the situation of the physical launch of GTA 6 during the next 24 hours. We have not yet received all the details from our side, but if the information that it is a boxed code is true, we will not support the launch of GTA 6,” Loot Box Gaming wrote on social networks. “When we founded LBG, we did it out of love for our favorite medium, video games, as well as the preservation of that medium. If a product doesn’t respect the people who pay their hard-earned money to buy it, then we have no business trying to sell it to our customers, whom we value above all else.”

Rockstar Games has attempted to save itself from the controversy, emailing customers who inquired about a disc edition that “you will be able to get a physical copy of the game in the coming months.”

For the moment, the controversy surrounding “Grand Theft Auto VI” shows no signs of calming down, having simultaneously touched on some of the most sensitive issues that the video game industry has been dealing with in recent years, except for the use of AI.

However, for analysts this fuss will do little to prevent “GTA VI” from being the most successful game of 2026 and perhaps the decade, with analyst Joost van Dreunen predicting that the title will match the success of its predecessor “and which will sell to at least 30% of the total console audience, with a total of 38 million copies and just over $3 billion in sales during its first 12 months”.

As you may remember, “Grand Theft Auto V” broke sales records upon its release in 2013, achieving US$800 million in sales in its first 24 hours and crossing the billion-dollar threshold on the third day of its release, a milestone not only in the video game industry, but also in the film and music industry. It is estimated that to date it has sold around 210 million copies, an exorbitant number only surpassed by the ubiquitous “Minecraft” with 350 million titles sold.