GTA 6 Takes Over Game Informer Issue 382: 14 Pages, 12 New Screenshots and Original Rockstar Cover Art

Game Informer confirmed on September 25 that Grand Theft Auto VI is the cover story of Issue 382. The magazine’s own wording keeps it simple: a 14-page cover story built on “exclusive interview quotes and details of all things Vice City and Leonida”, plus a dozen screenshots that have never been shown anywhere. That is a bigger deal than the page count suggests, because Rockstar almost never puts developers on the record between trailers, and the studio has granted exactly this kind of access to Game Informer before at a telling moment. The 2012 GTA 5 cover story was the piece that revealed the game had three playable protagonists.

The timing is deliberate. The digital edition goes live on September 29, fifty one days before the November 19 launch, with subscribers reading it in the magazine’s app first. Print copies ship to subscribers and reach shops over the following weeks, and per GamingBible the issue sells in the United States and internationally in more than 50 countries. New print subscriptions quote six to eight weeks for delivery, so the app is the way most people will actually read it on day one.

The front page itself is original artwork Rockstar produced specifically for the magazine, which makes it the first fully new piece of official GTA 6 art since the Extended Look window. It shows Jason and Lucia in a red convertible with weapons drawn and duffel bags in the car, and the community identified the vehicle within hours: it matches the classic Dominator style convertible Jason drives in the first trailer. The composition rewards the pause button, with bullet holes in the bodywork, an iguana lounging on a palm trunk above the pair and a police helicopter reflected in the paint, so the picture tells a small story about a getaway rather than posing the leads against a skyline.

Game Informer is leaning into the collector angle, printing the cover with minimal text so the artwork stands on its own. Given how the GTA 5 issue became a keepsake, the pitch writes itself.

The byline matters here. Senior associate editor Marcus Stewart is a lifelong South Florida resident, and the magazine is selling that directly, promising his “homegrown perspective” on how well Rockstar captured the place he grew up in. The three named topics all point at the simulation layer rather than story: advanced weather systems that simulate Florida’s less sunny weather phenomena, the “staggering” amount of wildlife, native and otherwise, roaming Leonida on land, air and sea, and how the studio researched Miami and Florida to build what it calls its most culturally accurate world to date.

Update, September 30: the digital issue is out and the interviewee list is confirmed, exactly as French outlet Rockstar Actu reported before release: Aaron Garbut, co-studio head of Rockstar North and art director on every GTA since 2001, in what the piece notes is his first interview, narrative senior vice president Rupert Humphries, environment art lead Paul MacPherson, lighting and rendering lead Owen Shepherd and dynamic art lead Michael Kane.

Game Informer earned its place in GTA history by getting the access nobody else gets, and the magazine itself has lived a whole arc since: shut down by GameStop in August 2024, then revived in 2025 under new ownership with much of the old editorial team back. Landing the biggest game of the decade as a cover story is the loudest possible statement that the revival is real.

For GTA 6 coverage, the practical read is simple. This is the first substantial press access since the hands-on preview wave, it arrives from developers who rarely speak, and it is aimed at the systems this site tracks closest: weather, wildlife and the credibility of Leonida as a place. The full story is now out and covered here in three pieces: hurricanes and the weather system, the 170-plus animal species and the map, regions and northern Leonida.