Phantom Vice Auto: the GTA clone launching on Steam on the same November 19

While half the industry clears November to avoid clashing with GTA VI, a three-person Turkish studio has decided to do the exact opposite: Brgames Interactive will launch Phantom Vice Auto in Steam early access on November 19, the very same day as Rockstar’s game.

The move has its own perverse logic. GTA VI won’t come to PC at launch - Rockstar ships first on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, as its platform strategy already made clear - so Phantom Vice Auto presents itself as the “GTA at home” for PC players: free-roam driving, shootouts and parkour in a clearly Miami-inspired metropolis, with a logo that looks suspiciously familiar.

As Polygon reports, the Steam page promises three playable protagonists in the GTA V style (“a street-smart hustler, a disgraced former agent, and a cold-blooded mercenary”) and even a 32-player Phantom Vice Online mode. All of it built, according to the studio’s website, by a team of three that started the project in 2024. The store text itself should be taken with a grain of salt: it invites players to “experience entertainment blockbusters Phantom Vice Auto and Phantom Vice Auto Online, now upgraded for a new generation,” as if this were a remastered classic rather than an early-access project.

Polygon sums it up with equal parts affection and skepticism: opportunistic clones are a blight on digital storefronts, but context matters - the biggest entertainment release ever versus three developers from Turkey. It’s hard not to smile at that level of nerve.

Let’s be clear: this is nothing more than a curiosity of the ecosystem GTA VI generates, not a real alternative. But as a thermometer of the phenomenon, it’s perfect: when even the clones want their slice of November 19, it’s obvious who owns the calendar.