How was GTA VI made? What Rockstar North told Bloomberg

Rockstar usually lets its games do the talking. Five weeks before GTA VI's release it did the opposite: it opened Rockstar North in Edinburgh to Bloomberg and talked, on the record, about the eight years it took to make the game. Here is what its leaders said, and what it means for the game and the one after it.

Verdict: Confirmed, Very High confidence, as Rockstar's own account: GTA VI started in 2015 as "Project Americas", waited while most of Rockstar finished Red Dead Redemption 2, and took more than eight years. Rockstar built the setting first, then the characters, then the story. Its staff nearly doubled, to 4,711 across 12 offices. Its leaders say the two delays had no single dramatic cause, and that the engine, tools and team built for GTA VI will make the next game faster. Confirmed: Rockstar rejected the rumour that GTA VI cost more than $1.5 billion, but gave no figure. Not known: what it actually cost, or when the next game comes.

How was GTA VI made?

Setting first, then characters, then story. Rob Nelson, one of the game's three heads of development, described the order to the French magazine TROISCOULEURS: "we will figure out where we're going to set it first." For GTA VI that meant Florida and Miami. A handful of people went first, to drive around and take pictures; larger groups followed with local consultants. The team chose the areas it wanted, such as the Everglades, while the map was blocked out.

Then the writers looked for "the best character set to take us through the widest range of places": characters Nelson calls "your tour guides or companions through this world". Only then does Rupert Humphries, Rockstar's senior vice president of narrative, write a page-and-a-half outline of the story, and the big story missions are built around it. The story is set over chapters.

Bloomberg's account fits. From 2015, Rockstar staff made research trips to Miami: they rode with police, took aerial photos from helicopters and went to nightclubs to study the lighting.

Why did GTA VI take so long to make?

Because it waited for Red Dead Redemption 2, and then the studio grew around it. The first research trip, in 2015, was for a project code-named "Project Americas", which at first aimed to cover parts of North and South America; it was later cut down to Miami and its surroundings. Rockstar had hoped to make it alongside Red Dead Redemption 2, but as that game grew, Nelson moved most of the company onto finishing it, and GTA VI was pushed back several years. Most of the team moved onto GTA VI after Red Dead Redemption 2 shipped in 2018. In all, Bloomberg reports, it took more than eight years.

Rockstar had 2,441 employees when Red Dead Redemption 2 came out and 4,711 across 12 offices by August 2026, by its own figures. Bloomberg describes a stretch when the vision wasn't yet clear, which Nelson calls "a dark period"; a pandemic that halted performance capture; and a wave of hiring that made it harder to communicate. Phil Hooker, another head of development, says the game began to come together around 2022: "You go through a period where things don't work, but you see snippets."

Why was GTA VI delayed?

No single dramatic reason, Rockstar's leaders say now. Bloomberg sums up their account as "a ton of moving pieces that didn't quite come together at the pace they'd hoped". One example: when the team worked out how many non-player characters it needed to write and animate, it found it didn't have the capacity. "The projections they were giving us were horrifying," Nelson says. Rockstar built a studio in Los Angeles, full of writers, producers and directors, to do nothing but create them.

Hooker: "I think when it became apparent that some areas weren't going to make it, that's when we decided to make the shift of date. We could hit that schedule, but it won't be the game we want to make." Jennifer Kolbe, Rockstar's head of publishing, phoned Take-Two's CEO to ask for each delay.

At the time, Rockstar gave the same reason both times: the quality and polish players expect. This is a look back at those two delays, not a sign of a third. 19 November 2026 is still the date, and the release-date briefing has the full history.

Who made GTA VI?

Three heads of development, rather than one director. After Red Dead Redemption 2, Rob Nelson, Phil Hooker and Aaron Garbut all took that title; Nelson and Garbut also run Rockstar North. By the end of 2019 they had the skeleton of the story, about Jason Duval and Lucia Caminos. Bloomberg reports that some staff grumbled about too many cooks; Nelson's reply is that a single leader brings problems of their own.

Dan Houser, Rockstar's co-founder and the lead writer on most of its games, wasn't involved. He left in March 2020, and in September 2025 he told IGN that GTA VI is "not going to be a story that I wrote or a character set that I developed". His view of it: "The game will be great, I'm sure."

His brother Sam Houser, Rockstar's president, still doesn't give interviews. In October a GQ writer said Houser had pulled out of a profile four years in the making. That is the writer's account, and Rockstar hasn't commented. So Rockstar speaks through its developers: Nelson, Hooker, Garbut and Kolbe.

How much did GTA VI cost to make?

Rockstar won't say. But Kolbe "did shoot down a popular rumor" that it cost more than $1.5 billion, Bloomberg reports. That is Rockstar's first word on the budget, and it is a denial, not a number: it doesn't confirm any lower figure. Bloomberg's own judgement, from the time and the people involved, is that GTA VI is "almost certainly the most expensive video game ever created". The budget-rumours briefing grades every figure, including the $2 billion claim this denial disputes.

Was GTA VI made with crunch?

Rockstar says it tried not to, and did better than last time. After Red Dead Redemption 2, Kolbe says, the leadership told staff: "We're not going to finish this game by crunching." Rockstar added people, changed how it scheduled work and gave time off for extra hours. Her verdict: "It's not been perfect, but it's certainly better than Red Dead II was." She adds that whenever she says they haven't crunched, "someone is going to say, 'I did.'" That is Rockstar's account; no figures for hours worked have been published.

Security shaped the work too. Since 2024 staff have worked from the office five days a week, and GTA VI's developers can't reach the studio's servers and tools from home. Kolbe says Rockstar will look at the rule again after launch, though she doubts it will go hybrid: "I think if we did not have a game that people wanted to steal as much, maybe it would be an easier conversation."

Bloomberg's feature also covers the 34 staff Rockstar dismissed in 2025 and the union case that followed. That case is still before an employment tribunal, so it has its own page, with both sides' accounts.

Are there new GTA VI images in the Bloomberg feature?

Yes. Rockstar supplied an image that Bloomberg says was made exclusively for Businessweek, a police helicopter's searchlight over a neon-lit street at dusk, and four game stills, one of them of Jason and Lucia by a pickup truck. The feature runs in Bloomberg Businessweek's November 2026 issue.

Will Rockstar's next game take as long as GTA VI?

Rockstar says it won't. "The engine, the tools and the team we've built during this project will allow us to do things more quickly," Hooker told Bloomberg. "I feel confident that we can build on top of this and go more sideways than upwards to build more compelling content." Garbut: "now it's done, and we're not going to rip it apart." Bloomberg says they vow the next release won't take another eight years, and points to Vice City, which was made in less than a year on top of GTA III.

Take-Two expects the team to stay together. Its CEO, Strauss Zelnick, said in May that Rockstar's attrition rate is "very low", that "we have a lot of work to do after the launch of GTA 6", and that he expects no change in the team.

Rockstar hasn't announced its next game, or when it would come. So "faster" is an intention, not a schedule. What Rockstar and Take-Two have said about the game after GTA VI, and the rumours about it, are graded in the briefing on Rockstar's next game.

What changes this: Rockstar announcing its next game, with a date that shows whether it came faster; Rockstar or Take-Two disclosing what GTA VI cost; or Rockstar changing its office rule after launch, as Kolbe says it will consider. Each would be logged here.