Rockstar North's Leslie Benzies, who is best known for his work as lead developer in the mega popular "GTA" series, has left the game studio, according to Kotaku. His exit is expected to impact the future of the franchise, which means that the upcoming version of the game, "GTA 6," will not come out anytime soon.

The latest installment in the open world, action-adventure game series was originally expected to be released by 2018, five years after the launch of its predecessor and current hit, the "GTA 5."

"GTA 6" was supposed to be released alongside the Sony PlayStation 5, which is expected to be unveiled in 2018 as well. But with Benzies's exit, "GTA 6" is now poised to be unveiled by 2020 at the earliest.

The title is expected to boast a map much larger than what "GTA 5" has, which is already big and has a great deal of areas to explore. A map, which is said to be bigger than the maps from all games combined, is definitely not going to be easy and quick to build.

Rockstar has also reiterated that they take years to put together a new installment of their flagship titles, especially with since fans have high expectations. They always seem to deliver anyway, considering "GTA 5" has become the fastest entertainment property to gross $1 billion, acording to IGN.

There is a great amount of work that will go to "GTA 6," and Rockstar wants to make sure that everything is perfect when it releases. Titles like "GTA" also "take time," said Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick during an interview with Gamespot.

"GTA 6" should be a heavily upgraded installment too, especially if it will be made compatible with new editions of Microsoft's Xbox One and Sony's PlayStation console, which are believed to be released in a few years.

With the latest iteration of the successful franchise still way down the line, it is expected that Rockstar will keep fans busy with "GTA 5" for a while by releasing new DLCs and fresh content.