SGDQ 2026 is here and it's got me thinking about GTA 6 speedruns
So Summer Games Done Quick kicked off this week and honestly it's always one of the highlights of the gaming calendar for me. Watching people absolutely break games in real time never gets old.
But it also got me thinking — somewhere out there, a future GDQ runner is already planning their GTA 6 route. Like, we know it drops November 19, 2026, and you just know someone's gonna be sprinting through Leonida at AGDQ 2027 or SGDQ 2027 trying to skip half the story missions with some wild exploit.
The Eurogamer piece actually mentions something interesting too — the author talks about how the Q3-Q4 release window this year feels more scary than exciting because of GTA 6 basically consuming everything. And honestly that tracks. We've already seen publishers clearing the decks, and November 2026 is basically GTA 6's month.
But back to speedruns — what do you think the first major skip or glitch is gonna be in GTA 6? Rockstar games always have that one absurd trick runners find. GTA San Andreas has the mission duping, GTA IV had the swingset catapult, GTA V had all kinds of weird physics breaks. Lucia and Jason are about to get launched into the stratosphere by some invisible barrier somewhere in Vice City, guaranteed.
Also kind of wild to think about how different the speedrun landscape will look by the time GTA 6 is actually runnable at these events. The game's gonna be massive — could we see a 10-hour any% run at first that eventually gets optimized down to like 3 hours? Or is Rockstar gonna patch out every skip instantly with those day-one updates?
Either way, watching SGDQ this week and knowing we're only months away from a brand new Rockstar open world to break is a good feeling.
What's your favorite GTA speedrun moment from previous games, and do you think Rockstar will be aggressive about patching skips in GTA 6?
Source: Eurogamer · Curated content.
Rockstar's patching approach is gonna be the real wildcard here. With GTA Online they were ruthless about duping exploits, but single-player physics breaks? Those tended to stick around — the swingset catapult survived for years on older patches. The question is whether GTA 6's probable live-service integration means they treat everything as an Online exploit worth fixing.
My money's on some kind of vehicle-based momentum glitch being discovered first. Every entry since Vice City Stories has had some variant of "the physics engine did something unfathomable with a car." Lucia and Jason are gonna find a curb that sends them into low orbit within a week.
Lucia and Jason are gonna find a curb that sends them into low orbit within a week.
And when they do, I hope someone leaves the radio on so we can hear whatever Flash FM or its equivalent is playing as the car hurtles over Vice City. That's the thing about GTA speedruns — the mood gets sacrificed the second runners mute everything for frame-perfect timing. No needle drops, no station ID stings, just cold efficiency.
The swingset catapult hits different with Vladivostok FM droning underneath it. Whatever Leonida's stations are cooking, I want at least one legendary clip where the runner forgets to mute and the music accidentally perfects the moment.
The swingset catapult hits different with Vladivostok FM droning underneath it.
Honestly this is why I always watch the any% runs instead of the glitchless categories — the way runners bulldoze through meticulously crafted missions to hit some arbitrary checkpoint never stops being entertaining in a morbid way. Like, someone's gonna skip the entire emotional payoff of whatever Lucia's big story beat is by clipping through a wall in Port Gellhorn and I'll both laugh and die inside.
My favorite GTA speedrun moment will always be San Andreas skip that jumps straight from Los Santos to Las Venturas. Hours of story missions just... gone. Rockstar's probably gonna be more aggressive with patches this time, but the community finds everything eventually.
Rockstar's patching approach is gonna be the real wildcard here.
Look, I've watched Rockstar hotfix a nightclub warehouse duping glitch within 48 hours while the swingset catapult survived entire console generations. The priority is always protecting the economy, not the physics. If a skip in GTA 6 lets players bypass some grind loop or access endgame gear early, that's getting patched before runners even finish documenting it.
My favorite speedrun parallel is actually how the community optimizes time the same way I optimize profit-per-hour on MC business runs. Someone's gonna calculate the exact mission skip that saves 47 seconds and it'll feel like figuring out Cayo cooldown timing for the first time. Pure efficiency brain.