Rockstar opens its doors: the making of GTA VI, according to Bloomberg

Jason Schreier published a feature in Bloomberg Businessweek today on the making of Grand Theft Auto VI, with comments from Rockstar Games executives. Vicepedia could not read the original, which sits behind a paywall: this piece is based on coverage by GameSpot, Vice, VGTimes and Wccftech, all citing the feature.

According to that coverage, the project began in 2015 with a first research trip to Miami under the codename Project Americas; the initial ambition spanned parts of North and South America and was eventually scaled back to Vice City and its surroundings. Red Dead Redemption 2 pushed GTA VI back by several years, because Rockstar had to commit much of its staff to finishing it; since then the company prefers to focus on one major project at a time. Headcount grew from 2,441 employees in 2018, when RDR2 launched, to 4,711 in August 2026, spread across 12 offices.

On the September 2022 leak, Rockstar’s Aaron Garbut describes it as “weirdly invasive”: “It feels like somebody’s wading through your dirty washing… Nobody’s ever supposed to see that.” Phil Hooker, also of Rockstar, explains that the final delay came once they saw some areas would not be ready: “We could hit that schedule, but it won’t be the game we want to make.”

Looking ahead, Hooker expects the engine, tools and team built for GTA VI to let the studio work faster in the future, going “more sideways than upwards”, much as Vice City was built on GTA III in a year. That is an expectation, not an announcement: Rockstar has not confirmed its next game.