Summary
An obscureGTA OnlineEaster egg has seemingly teased the date of the firstGrand Theft Auto 6trailer months ago. One eagle-eyed fan even speculated that this detail—spotted on a peculiar in-game shirt—could hint at the potentialGTA 6release date, although that theory appears to be shaky, at best.
While fans have longexpected Rockstar to teaseGTA 6inGTA Online, it would appear that the company finally did so as part of the San Andreas Mercenaries expansion, which debuted back in mid-June. Among many other things, the content drop included a Special Top called the ??? Tee, a T-shirt adorned with a cryptic number sequence: 15140504012523091212180522050112011212.
GTA Online Seemingly Teased GTA 6 Trailer Premiere Date in June 2023
The fandom quickly realized that the pattern actually uses the A1Z26 cipher, with each number corresponding to a letter in the English alphabet. Deciphering the sequence yielded a cryptic message stating that “one day will reveal all,” which was originally uncovered by X—formerly Twitter—userGTANet. Reflecting on this detail half a year later, X user Dyllie realized that the encoded message also includes “12523,” which ostensibly refers to June 16, 2025,the recently confirmed date of theGTA 6reveal trailer premiere.
Moving into much wilder speculation, Dyllie noted how the same sequence overlaps with “040125,” theorizing how Rockstar might even be hinting at the game’s release date here. The idea itself is fairly dubious, not least because the highlighted sequence points to April Fools' Day 2025. And then there’s the exceedingly slim likelihood of Rockstar actually being willing to tease a concrete release date forGTA 6two years in advance. Namely, game development tends to be far too unpredictable for such highly specific medium-term targets to ever materialize, nevermind end up in teasers.
Finally, there’s also the fact thatTake-Two itself recently hinted thatGTA 6will release before April 2025. Specifically, the Rockstar parent revealed it expects a 45% revenue increase during the fiscal year 2025, which concludes in March 2025.
GTA Online Once Again Drew Attention to the ??? Tee in October 2023
That notwithstanding, the theory that the “12523” part of the pattern teased the upcoming reveal trailer premiere appears to be much more believable. After all, that wouldn’t have been the onlyGTA 6trailer date hint that Rockstar has providedto date. And there’s little doubt that the ??? Tee holds some special significance, as the developers had once again drawn attention to it in late October, whenGTA Onlineawarded the T-shirt to any player abducted during the third stage of the Sightseeing Halloween event.
Grand Theft Auto 6
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Set to be the eighth mainline title in the long-running series, Grand Theft Auto 6 is being developed by Rockstar Games.
