GTA 6 fans are attempting to piece together its map with MS Paint and Google Earth

September 23, 2022

Rockstar Games hasn’t even confirmed that GTA 6 is set in Vice City, but fans are well on their way to creating a map in the meantime.

Thanks to leaks, GTA 6 Vice City already has a fan-made map

The city hasn’t appeared in a new game in 16 years, but the basic layout is assumed to be the same, and fans have used leaks to piece together what they think the map will look like in the new game.

In the midst of a barrage of social media chatter surrounding various interpretations of the leaked footage, the vast majority of which has since been removed, these series fans have been attempting to predict what the game’s map will look like when it finally arrives.

Some will undoubtedly regard it as a waste of time, but given how long it’s likely to be before any official information is released – with the game not expected to be released for at least two years – it does help to make GTA 6 seem that little bit more real.

Are you eager to learn what GTA 6’s landscape will look like?

As  Kotaku’s Zack Zwiezen points out, this sort of thing isn’t exactly new in the GTA community, with GTA 5’s map having started to receive a similar treatment after the release of its first teaser trailer in 2011. This eventually led to the creation of a map that turned out to be surprisingly accurate when placed next to the game’s actual map.

However, this time the task is being approached in a little bit of a different way thanks to the leaked footage, which has given players an early look at the game and given them the dilemma of relying on a resource that they can’t share around without running the risk of legal trouble.

This situation has necessitated the development of a number of solutions, including the use of Google Earth screenshots and Microsoft Paint sketches as substitutes for the leaked footage, offering safer alternatives.

However, according to Zwiezen, some members of the community are dissatisfied with this approach and have chosen to hold their mapping sessions in private Discord servers, where footage sharing is far less risky.

Whatever camp players have chosen, techniques such as frame-by-frame footage analysis, local knowledge and landmark-based triangulation are being used to help form maps that will only become more accurate as official information and trailers for the game become available.