Screenshots of GTA Online players receiving a notification in the game saying “GTA VI Coming in 2019” has cropped up a lot as of late, and it’s easy to see that this is just fake news. No news outlets has reported on any news of GTA VI prior to this and Rockstar themselves has not mentioned it.
Rockstar clarified that it is indeed hoax.
This is a hoax made with the use of mods, and not an official message or statement from Rockstar Games. *OV
— Rockstar Support (@RockstarSupport) July 2, 2018
But those are not photoshopped images, apparently. Those are real push notifications, received in-game in GTA Online.
The notifications were first seen popped up on last generation consoles- the PS3 and Xbox 360 which has stopped being updated. More recently, the fake notifications have penetrated to PC players, with many players on Reddit and the Rockstar forums discussing about it. While the most informed of gamers can clearly see it’s a hoax- Rockstar is going to release Red Redemption II soon and it will be years before we hear any news of their new big open world title- the fact that it is a real push notification is worrying. From the various forums, it is to be believed that use of mod menus, available on PS3, Xbox 360 and PC is the culprit.
Hackers and cheaters are rampant on GTA Online but there are also modders who only touch the single player. Rockstar’ have been trying to clamp the former two down, to the point they have to stop mod tools like OpenIV from being available (though it is now available again).
PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game have yet to receive this sort of notification.
Considering that Red Dead Redemption II will also have a strong multiplayer component that may be an equivalent to GTA Online, perhaps this is why Rockstar is yet ready to have the Western open world game for PC just yet.
Via Kotaku, Polygon, Rock Paper Shotgun