The latest version of Unreal Engine, version 5.8, is now available to developers and played a role in this.

Grand Theft Auto VI will arrive on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series on November 19, and preorders will open next week. Because of this, Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive will surely ramp up their marketing activities and finally reveal more of the game, which is expected to become one of the most successful titles ever. One indie developer, however, had grown tired of waiting and spent the past dozen days or so trying to create his own version of the game using artificial intelligence. The results are both impressive and ridiculous.

Xu Ziwen, founder of Hyperecho, a startup dealing with AI agents, began working on creating Grand Theft Auto VI with AI agents on June 10, launching development in the Godot engine. Progress on the GT-Caliber project was incredibly fast, because by the third day, the AI agents had implemented many features requested by the community: NPCs were walking, cars were driving on roads, and shadows and reflections were functioning properly. However, things started to go wrong almost immediately: from the second day, the AI agents began building the wrong city, creating Los Angeles instead of Miami, the real-world inspiration for Vice City.

This AI version of Grand Theft Auto VI encountered several further setbacks along the way. On day 7, Xu switched from Godot to Unreal Engine 5, while on day 8, the developer’s Mac crashed because all the agents opened the game simultaneously to take screenshots of it. Development continued nonetheless: although the NPCs lost their walking animations, the AI agents created an in-game phone with maps, contacts, and a wallet. In a strange twist of fate, Rockstar announced the opening of Grand Theft Auto VI preorders just as development reached day 9 and ran into another small problem. While the map was already complete and constantly being refined, Xu tried to move the project to the recently released Unreal Engine 5.8 to take advantage of its Model Context Protocol, or MCP, but the results were not good, and actually slowed the project down. According to the developer, the MCP in 5.8 is not very good and slows down the build. Moving to the latest version seemed like an obvious step, but it was not, because the loop runs better without it.

Although this project is undoubtedly impressive, it once again confirms that AI on its own is far from capable of developing a game like Grand Theft Auto VI. Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Take-Two, knows this well, as he believes the lack of creativity would prevent the creation of games similar to Rockstar’s franchises, even if it were possible to autonomously develop a huge open-world game using AI.

Source: WCCFTech

Day 2 of building my GTA 6 agent in the loop.

It’s working better than yesterday, genuinely.

But two things are bugging me. The Godot version still looks cheap, or might be because half of it isn’t finished.

The agent built downtown LA skyscrapers, which is a problem,… https://t.co/M49nMSoYvN pic.twitter.com/TBvAOab7DD

– Ziwen (@ziwenxu_) June 11, 2026

I spent a week ignoring everyone who said to switch engines.

Day 7, I pivot. You were right.

Building GTA 6 with a loop of AI agents. I spent the entire day on one thing: Swapping the project out of Godot and onto Unreal.

Yesterday I said I’d test Unity and probably skip… https://t.co/abvL6jJMhY pic.twitter.com/wjpPgUK6Tw

– Ziwen (@ziwenxu_) June 16, 2026

I let a loop of AI agents build GTA 6 while I slept. Woke up to a dead Mac and a half walking NPC.

Day 8. We’re moving the whole game from Godot to Unreal, and the agents kept shipping right through it:
– the first NPC walks but no animations
– in-game phone now has maps,… https://t.co/GevGLEXcQw pic.twitter.com/vj0bQDSnEl

– Ziwen (@ziwenxu_) June 17, 2026

Rockstar just announced GTA 6 preorders open June 25.

We are at day 9 of building my own with a loop of AI agents, and the streets finally have people in them.

The map’s set, so I’m leaving it as it is and slowly adding more stuff into it.

the honest part: everyone’s hyping… https://t.co/HqoW3J92YP pic.twitter.com/vxZl7udXIO

– Ziwen (@ziwenxu_) June 18, 2026