Building GTA 6’s NPCs with unique behavior patterns proved more demanding than Rockstar expected, contributing to at least one delay. Jason and Lucia’s changing relationship also required years of work on the systems that let the two protagonists act together.
Jason Schreier’s Oct. 15 Bloomberg report, published ahead of the stated Nov. 19 release, examines how Rockstar has been making the game. It addresses longstanding rumors about the budget, tone, and scale, though it doesn’t get into story details or what the online component will offer.
Table of Contents
1. Rockstar rejects the rumor of a budget above $1.5 billion
The $1.5 billion rumor hasn’t survived scrutiny from Rockstar. Head of publishing Jennifer Kolbe denied that GTA 6’s budget exceeded that amount, which was the cited cost of building Dubai’s Burj Khalifa. Rockstar didn’t give Bloomberg an actual budget figure.
Schreier nevertheless considers GTA 6 the most expensive game ever made, pointing to its large development team and the years it has spent in active production. That remains his assessment, rather than a cost record confirmed by a disclosed total.
2. Red Dead Redemption 2 pushed GTA 6’s eight-year development back
Rockstar originally intended to develop GTA 6 alongside Red Dead Redemption 2. It hadn’t started the sequel immediately after GTA 5’s 2013 release on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and the plan for parallel development ran into another obstacle: the western’s growing ambitions demanded more staff.
Bloomberg reports that development lead Rob Nelson needed to bring in most of Rockstar, senior leadership included, to finish Red Dead Redemption 2. That decision moved GTA 6’s development back by several years.
GTA 6 only became Rockstar’s main focus after the epic western Red Dead Redemption 2 was released. Over its eight-year development, GTA 6 went through two delays and what Nelson called “a dark period,” with the project’s vision still unresolved. The long interval between GTA releases wasn’t simply eight years of work beginning when GTA 5 launched.
3. Rockstar is growing while the wider industry contracts
Rockstar’s workforce has grown from 2,441 employees at 12 offices worldwide in 2018 to roughly 4,711 today, according to Bloomberg. The report puts the company well ahead of any direct competitor in staff numbers, even as the wider industry contracts.
Those figures come with a history of criticism over how Rockstar treated its developers. In 2018, the company faced widespread scrutiny for requiring late nights and weekend work to complete Red Dead Redemption 2. Schreier’s reporting on those labor practices at Kotaku helped bring them to public attention.
Polygon’s Jen Glennon judges that Rockstar appears committed to learning from its past mistakes. That’s a qualified assessment of the company’s direction, not evidence that hiring more people has, by itself, fixed the working conditions criticized in 2018.
4. GTA 6 draws more from Red Dead Redemption 2’s realism
For Schreier, the key contrast between Rockstar’s previous games is how they approach storytelling. Red Dead Redemption 2 offered more nuance than GTA 5, but its commitment to realism could sometimes get in the way of fun. GTA 6 seeks a middle ground, apparently leaning more toward the western’s approach than GTA 5’s absurdity.
That doesn’t mean abandoning GTA’s outrageous actions. His account still includes throwing $20 bills at strippers and mowing down pedestrians. Alongside that freedom, the game wants players to care about its protagonists, whose partnership takes inspiration from Bonnie and Clyde.
The contrast puts the couple’s serious story alongside the excess players can indulge in. Glennon expects a prestige-TV-worthy narrative despite the online chatter about in-game cocaine use and nudity involving Jason and Lucia. That expectation reflects her reading of the reported tone, not revealed plot details.
5. The original map plan extended beyond Florida
Miami and its surroundings weren’t always the limit of GTA 6’s planned setting. Schreier confirms the longstanding rumor that an early codename was Project Americas, reflecting ambitions to cover large areas of both North and South America.
The team reduced that geographic scope later in development. This was a narrowing of the plan; the report doesn’t say those other regions had been finished before being cut.
6. Jason and Lucia required years of traditional game AI work
Jason and Lucia’s partnership shapes the game’s systems as well as its story. To let the protagonists do everything together, Rockstar needed complex AI: “the traditional kind, not ChatGPT,” as Schreier put it.
In this context, AI refers to human-made scripts and systems that control NPC behavior and other game mechanics. Developers used the term in that sense long before figures such as Sam Altman described AI as both essential technology and a possible threat to humanity. The report is discussing how characters and mechanics work, not ChatGPT-style content generation.
Player choices make the relationship between Jason and Lucia ebb and flow. Building a massive game around that evolving partnership took years, and Nelson described both hesitation within the team and arguments that the couple had to function as a couple.
“There’s trepidation about taking that on,” Nelson told Bloomberg. “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.”
7. Distinctive NPC behavior contributed to at least one delay
Following GTA 6’s first official reveal in 2023, Rockstar’s leaders recognized that their NPC plans needed far more time and manpower than they had budgeted for. The challenge was not merely populating the map, but giving those characters their own behavior patterns.
“The projections they were giving us were horrifying,” Nelson told Bloomberg.
For head of development Phil Hooker, the decision to move the date came when it became apparent that some areas wouldn’t be ready. Keeping the schedule would have meant compromising the game the team intended to make.
“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,” Hooker said. “We could hit that schedule, but it won’t be the game we want to make.”
