Rockstar Games North co-studio head Rob Nelson says Grand Theft Auto 6 will require players to earn money in the open world at certain points before the story can continue. Nelson made the comments in an interview recorded earlier this year and published in full this week, with GTA 6 scheduled to launch next month.

"We have made money matter more in this story than I think it has in previous GTA games," Nelson said. He explained that there will be times when players have to go out into the world and make money, whether by boosting cars and selling them or by sticking places up, in order to advance the mission flow.

The statement means cash is part of mission progression in GTA 6, not only a resource for buying weapons, vehicles, or property. A player who reaches one of these points without enough money will have to stop and earn it before the next mission becomes available.

Nelson named two ways to raise the money: stealing cars to sell them and robbing locations. Both fit the story of protagonists Jason and Lucia, whose finances look set to play a direct role in the narrative.

Players planning a story-focused first playthrough should expect to spend some time on these money-making activities between missions. Rockstar has not said how much cash individual missions require, how often these checkpoints appear, or whether other income sources count toward them.

In the same interview, Nelson addressed how GTA 6 handles physical intimacy between Jason and Lucia. Nelson described intimacy as a central part of any relationship and said it "has to be done right," adding that the team keeps iterating on those scenes until they feel right. "We definitely want to err on the right side of it," Nelson said.

When the interviewer suggested that certain minigames should not show up in the game, Nelson laughed and agreed. He did not name it, but the exchange recalls Hot Coffee in GTA: San Andreas, a scrapped sex minigame that was never meant to be playable yet was datamined from the game files and later unlocked by modders.

GTA 6 does include sexual content. The game's European age rating, covered in the PEGI 18 rating for GTA 6, lists scenes of intercourse and occasional scenes of sexual fetishes.

Rockstar has not shown how these scenes are presented in the final game, and the studio has not released further details on the money requirements ahead of launch.