Rockstar’s Court Testimony Gives GTA 6 Online’s 32-Player Format Its Clearest Confirmation Yet
Grand Theft Auto VI’s online mode has stayed almost completely under wraps, but Rockstar’s own legal team may have just given it the clearest acknowledgment yet. During this week’s employment tribunal hearing over 34 dismissed developers, which we covered here, Rockstar’s Head of Publishing took the stand and effectively confirmed that GTA 6 Online is being built around a 32-player format, a detail that first leaked months ago but is only now getting an official framing from the studio itself.
A Rockstar Executive Calls GTA 6 Online One of Its Biggest Secrets
Testimony given at the Glasgow Tribunals Centre this week came from Jennifer Kolbe, Rockstar’s Head of Publishing, who described the online side of GTA 6 as “one of the most closely guarded secrets of the company.” Rockstar likened the level of secrecy to how Apple protects unreleased iPhone details or how Coca-Cola guards its formula, and Kolbe’s statement treated any public discussion of specific numbers or features as a serious problem for the studio, not just an inconvenience.
Grand Theft Auto VI is currently scheduled to launch on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S on November 19
The 32-Player Number Isn’t Actually New
Here’s the part worth being clear about: the “32-player” figure itself isn’t a fresh reveal from this week. It first surfaced back in January, when the YouTube channel People Make Games combed through early court filings from the same case and spotted a Discord message from a since-fired Rockstar developer discussing an internal test session. Describing that session, the developer wrote that it “was 32 players, not sure how that was difficult,” referring to a large-scale online test Rockstar had reportedly run internally.
What’s new is the context. Rather than an offhand line buried in a Discord export, the number is now part of Rockstar’s own evidence bundle for the final hearing, wrapped in testimony explicitly framing GTA 6 Online’s design details as trade secrets worth defending in court. That’s a meaningfully stronger acknowledgment than a leaked chat log, even if the underlying figure is the same one fans have been speculating about for months.
Why 32 Players Still Isn’t a Confirmed Cap
It’s worth resisting the urge to treat 32 as a locked-in lobby size. The number comes from an internal test session Rockstar ran at some point during development, not from a public statement about GTA 6 Online’s final specs, and player counts in a build like that can and often do change before launch. For comparison, current-generation GTA Online supports up to 30 players plus 2 spectators, so even if 32 turns out to be accurate, it would represent only a modest jump over the status quo rather than the massive leap some fans have hoped for.
Part of a Bigger Legal Fight
This detail is emerging inside the same tribunal case we’ve been following all week. The hearing centers on 34 developers (31 in the UK and 3 in Canada) whom Rockstar dismissed after accusing them of sharing confidential project information, allegations the workers and their union dispute. We’ve also covered the security side of that story, including the anti-leak team and physical security measures Rockstar detailed in our report on Rockstar’s war on GTA 6 leaks. The tribunal is expected to run into mid-October, weeks before GTA 6 itself launches.
Where This Leaves GTA 6 Online
Rockstar still hasn’t made any official statement about GTA 6 Online, and nothing shown in the Extended Look gameplay recap touched on multiplayer at all. What this week’s testimony really confirms isn’t a spec sheet, it’s that Rockstar considers GTA 6 Online significant enough to fight for its secrecy in open court, months after fans first spotted the same number in a leaked chat log. Expect Rockstar to stay quiet on actual details until it’s ready to reveal Online on its own terms, likely sometime after the single-player launch on November 19.
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Picture Source: Rockstar Games
