Bloomberg: Grand Theft Auto 6 will have a female protagonist

Grand Theft Auto 6 will have a female protagonist, according to sources from Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier. It would be the first time that the GTA franchise will have a female lead character.

The character is said to be of Hispanic descent and part of a duo inspired by Bonnie and Clyde, said Bloomberg. From this it can be concluded that the other character is a man. This is in contrast to previous parts of the franchise, in which one or more men always played the leading role.

According to Schreier’s sources, this new approach to the Grand Theft Auto franchise has to do with an overall adjustment of the work culture within Rockstar Games. There would once have been a ‘macho culture’ at the company, in which people often ‘drank and fought’. Excursions to strip clubs would also have been organized. This corporate culture combined with extreme working hours and high expectations, which is labeled as crunch in the industry, led to a protest by hundreds of employees in 2018. In 2010, the company was already discredited because of the same internal problems.

Rockstar would have turned around in the meantime, including the inclusion of a female main character in GTA 6. The new corporate culture would also be apparent from the fact that an as yet unannounced mode for GTA Online would have been deleted. In the ‘police and crook’ mode, players would mimic the child’s play, but due to ongoing controversies surrounding police brutality, the company would have decided not to release the mode.

According to the sources, developers will from now on ensure that there is no ‘beating down’; jokes about vulnerable or otherwise discriminated groups would no longer be acceptable. This would be a game changer for the franchise, as Grand Theft Auto has evolved over the decades into a satirical open-world franchise full of jokes about all kinds of populations, political affiliations and beliefs. Rockstar has already removed it transphobic content from the GTA V remasters.

Not much is officially known about Grand Theft Auto 6 yet, aside from the fact that Rockstar Games is working on it. According to Schreier and Battlefield leaker Tom Henderson, the game will not be released until 2024 at the earliest, partly because Rockstar takes the welfare of its employees more into account.

Previous installments in the GTA franchise only featured female secondary characters