Will GTA 6 have a photo mode?

Where does the photo mode report come from?

VICE’s September 5 roundup of creator previews says GTA 6 has a photo mode but that Rockstar Editor wasn’t available in the build shown. IBTimes UK, writing on September 13, listed a photo mode among systems described in the preview and warned that features from a pre-release build shouldn’t be treated as final. Our judgment: both are second-hand accounts of the same round of previews, so we treat them as one thin report, not two.

Rockstar hasn’t announced a photo mode in its own posts. VICE’s “not available in the version shown” for the Editor isn’t the same as cut, and nobody has said which it is.

Is photo mode the same as the phone camera?

No, and the reports don’t link them. By photo mode we mean a pause-menu tool for framing shots. VICE and IBTimes UK also list Snapmatic among the phone apps seen in previews, but neither describes what it does in GTA 6.

The clearest line on photos comes from Famitsu, though it isn’t about photo mode. Asked whether players can upload photos they take in the game, Rockstar North’s Rob Nelson said, in our translation, that you can send photos to your partner but can’t upload them, because both leads are on the run and in hiding, so they can’t post to social media. He didn’t say how those photos are taken. For what is known about the app, see our Snapmatic page and photos and photo mode.

What did Rockstar do with photo mode in Red Dead Redemption 2?

On consoles, it arrived after launch. Android Central reported on December 13, 2019 that a PS4 update added photo mode, with a free-form camera and filters. Windows Central reported on January 21, 2020 that it had reached Xbox One, after several weeks on PC and PS4. Photos could be saved or uploaded to the Rockstar Social Club, and Windows Central says the mode works only in Story Mode.

So Rockstar has added the feature after release before. That doesn’t tell us what GTA 6 will do, and we aren’t predicting.

What we don’t know yet

We don’t know whether Rockstar will announce a photo mode before launch, what it would let you adjust, whether Rockstar Editor returns, or where sent photos are stored. Check Rockstar’s own posts as launch nears.