Rockstar’s GTA6 merch names no protagonists

On 8 October Rockstar opened the Grand Theft Auto VI Collection at its own store — the first thing in this campaign a fan can buy that is not the game itself. The page the studio published to hold it does not describe the drop in prose; it enumerates it, in three grids, and the grids can be counted. Read on 10 October, there are 13 listings under Apparel, 8 under Accessories and 10 under Collectibles, for 31 items in a shop that still sells the older Grand Theft Auto lines alongside them. The Chinese coverage that ran this as news did so at 12:42 on 10 October, two days after the collection went live.

Count the names on that page and the shape changes. The words Jason and Lucia occur zero times across it. The only character the page names is Macca the Gator, the pink alligator from a television show that exists inside Leonida, and it names him four times: once in the title of the white tee, and three more in the copy around the collector’s box. A campaign built on two protagonists has produced a merchandise line in which neither protagonist is named. What the goods carry instead is the VI mark with palm trees, the Rockstar Games wordmark, the Goodtime State lettering, and Vice City’s own palm logo.

The 13 apparel listings are not 13 pieces of clothing. Four of the graphics — the Rockstar Games wordmark, the GTA VI logo, the Goodtime State art and the women’s cropped baby logo — are each offered in black, blue and pink, which is twelve listings, and the white Macca the Gator tee is the thirteenth. The 8 accessories resolve the same way: two cap designs in three colourways each, plus a tote in two, which is six caps and two bags. Twenty-one of the 31 listings are therefore eight products in colourways. The store’s own sizing narrows it further: the size chart published on a tee’s page documents nine sizes, from 2XS to 4XL, while the sizes actually sold on that same page are six, from S to 3XL.

The free control group is the same shop. Rockstar’s existing Grand Theft Auto apparel is built on screenshots — the product page for the Grand Theft Auto V Screenshot Tee states that the black tee carries a “screen printed screenshot from Grand Theft Auto V on the front center panel”, and the store sells equivalents for Grand Theft Auto III, San Andreas and Vice City. On the new collection page the word screenshot does not appear at all. So the line for the game arriving on 19 November is the first Grand Theft Auto drop from this store in which no shirt is a frame of the game.

The most expensive thing in the collection is also the only listing whose own page states what it is not. The Goodtime State – Vice City Collection is one entry in the collectibles grid, and its page lists eleven objects inside it — a Macca figure, Oakley sunglasses, a New Era cap, a crossbody bag, a magnetic mirror, a shot glass, a swizzle spoon, a razor-blade keychain, a pin set, a sticker pack and a double-sided poster — followed, in Rockstar’s own copy, by the line that the game is sold separately. The same page notes the box is not eligible for free shipping. The campaign’s priciest physical item therefore contains no copy of the game and adds no in-game item.

For anyone buying on 19 November the practical reading is narrow and worth having in advance. The merchandise is a Rockstar Store line, sold by the publisher and, in the announcement’s own word, available exclusively there. And what it leads with is the game’s marks, including, on the closest thing to character merchandise, an alligator from a show inside the game. The two faces the campaign has spent two years promoting appear on none of the 31 listings by name. Whether that is a deliberate withholding or simply what was ready in October, the effect for a fan who wants something to wear is identical: the protagonists are not for sale yet.