For many years, rumors have circulated in the Grand Theft Auto fan community about a particular feature of NPC artificial intelligence behavior. According to some players, Rockstar Games deliberately programmed characters in such a way that they sometimes "intentionally ram" the player's car or change lanes and put their vehicle in the way to provoke an accident.
Allegedly, this is how the creators of Grand Theft Auto games slow down a "too fast" player who accelerates to such a speed that the system cannot load the game world (various environment models, buildings, etc.) in time.
Amidst the approaching release of GTA VI, players have sometimes started publishing such recordings of (what they perceive as) strange behavior of NPC drivers in GTA VI. Some users would not like to see something similar on the roads in the new game.
Obbe Vermeij, former technical director of Rockstar North, noticed one such discussion and commented on the post. According to him, in GTA franchise games, developers did slow down players, but in a completely different way — by regulating air resistance:
In the trilogy [GTA III, Vice City, San Andreas] and GTA IV, we slowed the player down by creating zones that increased air resistance.
Obbe explained that such "lane changes" by drivers are a mere coincidence, related to the peculiarities of the road network:
Sometimes cars change lanes abruptly. This is 100% random. It happens especially suddenly when road network nodes are located too close to each other.
Rockstar Games is currently preparing for the release of Grand Theft Auto VI — the game is set to be released this year on November 19, exclusively on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S consoles. There is no information yet about the release date or release window for the PC version.