Rockstar opens up about the eight years behind GTA VI

Rockstar Games talks openly about the development of Grand Theft Auto VI for the first time. Several of its leaders gave Bloomberg Businessweek a full day of interviews in Edinburgh. They describe more than eight years of work, two delays and a dark period.

The article by Jason Schreier appeared on 14 October and is part of the November issue of the magazine. The interviews took place at Rockstar North in late September.

Project Americas

In 2015, Rob Nelson and other senior staff made a first research trip to Miami, Bloomberg writes. The game then had the code name Project Americas. The plan was to cover large parts of North and South America. That was later cut back to Miami and its surroundings.

GTA VI was meant to be built alongside Red Dead Redemption II. When that game grew, Nelson moved most of Rockstar onto it. That pushed GTA VI back by several years.

Three heads of development

After Red Dead Redemption II, several senior staff left, among them co-founder Dan Houser. Nelson, Phil Hooker and Aaron Garbut all became head of development. Some staff complained about indecision and conflicting visions, according to Bloomberg. Nelson says nobody told him so directly, but that he knows people said it.

By the end of 2019, the outline of the story stood, with Jason Duval and Lucia Caminos as a criminal couple. The rest took longer. The leaders debated how realistic the game should be, Nelson says. One example was whether the player has to take a beer from the fridge and pay for it at the counter.

A dark period

The pandemic sent staff home and halted the performance capture studios. Some senior designers quit, frustrated by the lack of progress. Nelson calls this a dark period, when the vision of the game was not yet clear. Only by 2022 could the full picture be seen, Hooker says.

One choice took years of work: Jason and Lucia can do everything together in the open world. As Jason, the player can text Lucia to meet. The two then walk hand in hand through a park, go to the gym or rob a store together.

The leak and the office

In September 2022, someone gained access to Rockstar’s Slack through phishing. Dozens of videos of unfinished gameplay then appeared online. Garbut tells Bloomberg it felt like a stranger going through dirty laundry.

Since 2024, all staff have to be at the office five days a week, for security reasons. Developers on GTA VI cannot reach Rockstar’s servers and tools from home. Jennifer Kolbe, head of publishing, says Rockstar will look at that rule again after the release. A return to the usual hybrid model is unlikely, according to Kolbe. Despite these measures, another major leak followed in August, Bloomberg notes.

Less crunch, twice as many people

After Red Dead Redemption II, the leaders promised that the next Grand Theft Auto would not be finished through crunch, Kolbe says. Rockstar hired more people, planned more strictly and gave time off for extra hours. It has not been perfect, but it is better than on Red Dead Redemption II, according to Kolbe.

In 2018, Rockstar had 2,441 employees. It now has 4,711 across 12 offices. A new studio in Los Angeles works only on the characters players do not control.

The fired staff

Last year, Rockstar fired 34 people, most of them part of a group that was trying to form a union. Rockstar says they shared confidential information on Discord, which the group disputes. The case is before a tribunal in Glasgow. Bloomberg expects a ruling at the end of October.

Over the summer, the group asked Rockstar for voluntary recognition of a union. It has been talking to management every week since then, Bloomberg writes. If the team wants a union, it will have one, Kolbe says.

Two delays

The first trailer of December 2023 promised a release in 2025. The leaders say they truly believed that at the time. Kolbe called Strauss Zelnick, the head of Take-Two, about the delay to May 2026. Months later, Kolbe had to call again for the move to November.

There was no single big reason for the delays, according to the leaders. Many parts did not come together as fast as hoped. The number of characters that still had to be written and animated was one example. That led to the studio in Los Angeles, and to the date of 19 November.

What is not known

Rockstar does not say what GTA VI cost to make. Kolbe does deny a rumour that the budget went past 1.5 billion dollars. The online part of the game was not discussed. Bloomberg expects it in 2027.

The next game will not take another eight years, the leaders say. According to Hooker, the engine, the tools and the team built for GTA VI allow Rockstar to work faster. Which game comes next is not known.