I made Discord think I'm playing GTA VI — here's how it works

CyberPino — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 14:58:34 +0000

I got tired of waiting for GTA VI, so I did the logical thing:

I made Discord think I'm already playing it.

I built GTA VI Presence Studio, a free and open-source Windows utility that can display a simulated GTA VI session on Discord.

Instead of just showing:

Playing Grand Theft Auto VI

it can show things like:

Grand Theft Auto VI
Free Roam • Jason Duval
Exploring The Leonida Keys
12:36 elapsed

The interesting part is that I ended up implementing two completely different approaches.

Native Discord Detection

The executable is named GTA6.exe and can be added to Discord's Registered Games.

Discord then handles the game card itself.

Custom Rich Presence

This is where most of the fun stuff is.

You create a free Discord Application, copy its Application ID and paste it into the program.

No bot.
No Bot Token.
No Client Secret.
No Discord password.

This unlocks things like:

• Jason / Lucia / automatic character switching
• Free Roam, Story Mission, Main Menu and other session modes
• automatic activity changes
• realistic variable timings
• custom activity text
• elapsed session time
• optional Rich Presence button

The only slightly annoying part is Discord's Art Assets system: if you want artwork in the custom Rich Presence, you currently upload it once through your own Discord Application.

After that everything is controlled through the desktop app.

The project is written in C# / WinForms and is completely open source.

GitHub:
https://github.com/mamt104/gta6-discord-status-simulator

I'm mainly looking for feedback now.

What would you change about the UI or setup flow?
And if you've worked with Discord RPC before, is there anything you'd implement differently?

DEV Community: CyberPino

I made Discord think I'm playing GTA VI — here's how it works