🙏 Rockstar’s development chiefs have vowed that the studio’s next game won’t take another eight years
👷 That’s because the tech built for GTA 6 gives them a foundation to build on
✈️ Full development of GTA 6 didn’t begin until 2018, after Red Dead Redemption 2 shipped, with early work dating back to a 2015 research trip to Miami
📈 Rockstar has nearly doubled in size to 4,711 staff and weathered two delays, two major leaks, a crunch reckoning and a union dispute along the way
Rockstar has vowed that its next Grand Theft Auto won’t take another eight years, with senior developers saying the groundwork laid for GTA 6 will speed up everything that follows.
As per a new in-depth piece for Bloomberg with Jason Schreier which marks the first time the studio has spoken openly about the development challenges behind the project, both Phil Hooker and Aaron Garbut, two heads of development at Rockstar, sat down with Schreier to explain how GTA 6 came to be, and why the next one won’t take as long.
For instance, Hooker noted that the engine, tools and team built for GTA 6 will let the studio “do things more quickly”. He added that he’s confident Rockstar can build on that foundation to expand its content rather than rebuild it each time.
Garbut stated that Rockstar made sweeping changes at a foundational level during the project to bring GTA 6 to life. With that work now finished, he said, there are no plans to tear it up for whatever comes next. Neither he nor Hooker said what that next game will be, or when it might arrive, though.
Bloomberg points to a precedent from the early 2000s, when Rockstar released games far more often. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City arrived less than a year after Grand Theft Auto III because it was built on work that had already been done, and it could be the case that Rockstar will back to that with the groundwork laid for GTA 6.
Why GTA 6 took so long
It’s clear from the gameplay we’ve seen for GTA 6 that Rockstar has put an awful lot of work into the game, which goes some way to explaining why it’s taken such a long time for it to come to fruition.
That said, the eight-year gap between Red Dead Redemption 2 and GTA 6 doesn’t represent just eight full years of production.
Rockstar actually began early work on GTA 6, then codenamed Project Americas, with a research trip to Miami in 2015. It was originally meant to be developed alongside Red Dead Redemption 2, but as that game’s ambitions grew, development lead Rob Nelson pulled most of the company onto RDR 2, pushing GTA 6 back by several years.
Full development of GTA 6 didn’t begin in earnest until Red Dead Redemption 2 was finished in 2018.
Even then, the path to getting GTA 6 was rocky, as Schreier contends. Several senior staff left after Red Dead Redemption 2, including Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser, leading Nelson, Hooker and Garbut to share the lead role. Nelson described a “dark period” when the vision for the game wasn’t yet clear, and the pandemic, rapid hiring and departures from the design team made things harder. Bloomberg says the story’s skeleton for GTA 6 wasn’t in place until the end of 2019.
The leaks Rockstar experienced for GTA 6, both in September 2022 and the Cyberleek ones we noted before the Netflix gameplay premiere back in August, were blows to Rockstar.
At the time, Rockstar officially addressed the leaks. The developer’s statement said it was “heartbreaking for our team” to see leaked clips of the game appear and apologized for the time lag between different clips and information being released, before we got the official GTA 6 Extended Look at the end of August on Netflix and subsequently YouTube.
Let’s not forget GTA 6 was also delayed twice. The first trailer in December 2023 promised a 2025 release, which Rockstar’s leaders say they believed at the time. It then slipped to May 2026 and later to November, where it sits now – Schreier’s article notes the reason for this is that the Rockstar team realized it couldn’t produce enough non-player characters in time. It responded by building a new studio in Los Angeles dedicated to creating them.
A bigger, changed Rockstar
Rockstar had 2,441 employees when Red Dead Redemption 2 launched and now has 4,711 across 12 offices. Bloomberg’s article notes that the studio has tried to avoid crunch on this project, using more rigorous scheduling and offering paid time off or extra pay for additional hours, though Rockstar’s publishing head Jennifer Kolbe acknowledged that it’s “not perfect”.
Not every change has been popular. Staff were ordered back into the office five days a week by 2024, with GTA 6 developers barred from accessing Rockstar’s tools remotely. Last year Rockstar also fired 34 employees, most of whom were part of a group trying to form a union. The company says they were dismissed for sharing confidential information, which the group disputes. A tribunal in Glasgow is expected to conclude at the end of October.
Rockstar wouldn’t say how much GTA 6 cost, though Kolbe dismissed a rumor that it topped the $1.5 billion price of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa. Bloomberg describes it as almost certainly the most expensive game ever made. Analysts expect it to sell 40 million copies and earn more than $3 billion in its first four months.
GTA 6 launches on November 19 on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.
Up next: GTA 6 PC release confirmed for early 2027, according to new report
Reece Bithrey is a journalist with bylines for Trusted Reviews, Digital Foundry, PC Gamer, TechRadar and more. He also has his own blog, UNTITLED, and graduated from the University of Leeds with a degree in International History and Politics in 2023.