Rockstar’s leadership has given its first account of how GTA 6 was made, to Bloomberg Businessweek’s Jason Schreier, in a day of interviews at Rockstar North in Edinburgh. On the record: the company grew from 2,441 staff at Red Dead Redemption II’s release to 4,711 across 12 offices, the game was codenamed Project Americas and once spanned two continents, head of publishing Jennifer Kolbe rang Take-Two’s Strauss Zelnick twice to delay it, Rockstar rejects the $1.5 billion cost rumour, a Glasgow tribunal over the 34 union-linked firings is due to resolve at the end of October, and the next game is promised in under eight years.
Headcount doubled: 2,441 at RDR2, 4,711 now, across 12 offices
Rockstar had 2,441 employees when Red Dead Redemption II shipped in October 2018. As of August it has 4,711 across 12 offices, on figures Rockstar gave Bloomberg. The growth includes a Los Angeles studio of writers, producers and directors whose only job is non-player characters, set up after internal projections of the NPC work came back, in Rob Nelson’s word, “horrifying”, and an expansion in India. Nelson, Phil Hooker and Aaron Garbut all hold the title head of development, with Nelson and Garbut also studio heads at Edinburgh. Nelson says nobody told him directly that three decision-makers was a problem: “But I’m aware that people would say that.”
Project Americas: two continents cut to Miami, and a start delayed by RDR2
The game was codenamed Project Americas because it was to cover large parts of North and South America; that was later cut to Miami and its surroundings. Nelson and other senior staff made the first Miami research trip in 2015. The plan was to build it alongside RDR2, but as that game grew Nelson moved most of the company, leadership included, onto finishing it, which pushed GTA 6 back several years. Rockstar now runs one main project at a time. After RDR2, co-founder Dan Houser and other senior staff left. The story skeleton, Jason Duval and Lucia Caminos robbing their way through Vice City, was in place by the end of 2019. Nelson calls the stretch before the design settled “a dark period”; some senior designers quit over the lack of visible progress, and the pandemic shut the performance-capture studios. By 2022 it was coming together. Hooker: “You go through a period where things don’t work, but you see snippets.”
The couple system was a deliberate commitment
Letting Jason and Lucia do everything in the open world together required what Schreier describes as traditional AI systems and years of work. “There’s trepidation about taking that on,” Nelson says. “Then you have certain people advocating for it: ‘We need this. This is a game about a couple. They have to be a couple.’ And so we had to commit to that.” The realism line was argued case by case, down to whether buying beer means walking to the fridge, carrying it to the counter and paying, and whether a stat-boosting sandwich needs ingredients bought first.
The 2022 leak, and the five-day office rule that followed
The September 2022 leak came through a phishing attack on Rockstar’s Slack. Garbut: “It feels like somebody’s wading through your dirty washing. It’s like they’re inside your head. You see your early work out there. Nobody’s ever supposed to see that.” By 2024 Rockstar required all staff in the office five days a week on security grounds and blocked access to its servers and tools from outside, which meant using vacation days for childcare or emergencies. Kolbe says the policy will be reexamined after launch but a three-two hybrid is unlikely: “The idea that we would have the game in that many environments is something that I think the security team would not love.” The August leak happened under those rules.
Two delays: Kolbe rang Zelnick twice, and he said “Please tell me you’re kidding”
Rockstar’s leaders say they believed the 2025 date in the first trailer when they set it. When the team told Kolbe a delay was needed, she called Take-Two chief executive Strauss Zelnick, first for May 2026, then months later for November. “I think he said, ‘You’re kidding. Please tell me you’re kidding,’” she says. “But once we talked through why, he got it.” Hooker says the date moved when “it became apparent that some areas weren’t going to make it”, the NPC capacity being one. Zelnick’s line is that delaying a game to “reach the level of perfection it has the ability to reach” is “a wise investment in time and financial resources”. Hooker adds that “the game’s never completely settled” and that things have changed in the last few months.
Crunch, and a union tribunal that resolves at the end of October
Kolbe says RDR2 was “a real moment for Rockstar to look at itself” and that she told staff, “We’re not going to finish this game by crunching.” The measures were more staff, slower task expectations, tighter scheduling, and paid time off or extra pay for extra hours. “It’s not been perfect, but it’s certainly better than Red Dead II was,” she says, adding that anyone who says they did crunch will get no argument from her. Last year Rockstar fired 34 people, most of them in a group trying to form a union, saying they had shared confidential information on a Discord server with hundreds of members including former staff; the group disputes that. A tribunal in Glasgow is expected to resolve the case at the end of October. Rachel Crawford, one of the 34: “I just want accountability.” The organising continued; the group asked for voluntary recognition over the summer and meets management weekly. Kolbe: “if they want a union, they will have a union.”
Cost: Kolbe rejects $1.5 billion; Schreier puts it above $1 billion
Rockstar will not give a figure. Kolbe shot down the rumour that the game cost more than the $1.5 billion Burj Khalifa, the comparison that has circulated since the summer. Schreier’s own estimate is that it may have cost more than double the $500 million ceiling other publishers work to. Analysts he cites expect 40 million copies and more than $3 billion in the first four months; GTA V has sold 230 million. Rockstar is not discussing GTA 6’s online component, which Bloomberg expects in 2027, and the current GTA Online makes an estimated half a billion dollars a year.
The next game: under eight years, on the GTA 6 foundation
Hooker: “The engine, the tools and the team we’ve built during this project will allow us to do things more quickly. I feel confident that we can build on top of this and go more sideways than upwards to build more compelling content.” Garbut: “We foundationally changed a lot of stuff on this project. But now it’s done, and we’re not going to rip it apart.” Bloomberg’s comparison is GTA III to Vice City, built in under a year on existing work. Neither names the next game. GTA 6 launches on 19 November; the GTA 6 hub carries everything Rockstar has confirmed so far.
Sources
- Bloomberg Businessweek, Jason Schreier, The Making of Grand Theft Auto VI, 14 October 2026