As we inch closer to Nov. 19, the long months of radio silence from developer Rockstar Games has given way to a steady trickle of new information about Grand Theft Auto 6, the most anticipated game of the year (if not the decade). On Oct. 15, Bloomberg's Jason Schreier published a deep-dive report into the making of the game. While the Bloomberg piece doesn't delve into story details or what we can expect from the online component of the game, it does address several longstanding rumors about GTA 6's budget, tone, and overall scale.
Here's everything we learned. Rockstar did not share a specific number for GTA 6's budget with Bloomberg. However, head of publishing Jennifer Kolbe "did shoot down a popular rumor that it surpassed the $1.5 billion it cost to build Dubai’s Burj Khalifa." That said, Schreier still asserts that GTA 6 is nevertheless the most expensive game ever created, based on the vast number of staff working on it and the many years it's spent in active development.
Even though GTA 5 was released all the way back in 2013 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, Rockstar didn't start working on the sequel straight away. Though the initial plan for the team was to work on GTA 6 and Red Dead Redemption 2 concurrently, the latter required more manpower as development went on. According to Bloomberg, "as that game’s ambitions grew, [development lead Rob] Nelson realized he needed to mobilize most of Rockstar, including the senior leadership, to help finish it.
That meant pushing GTA 6 back several years." GTA 6 only became the studio's primary focus after the epic western was in the wild. During those eight years, the game was delayed twice and experienced a difficult phase that Nelson referred to as “a dark period” when the vision for the project was still up in the air. Back in 2018, Rockstar Games was widely criticized for forcing developers to work late nights and weekends in order to get Red Dead 2 out the door — in no small part due to Schreier's reporting on the studio's labor practices while working at Kotaku.
It seems to be committed to learning from past mistakes. Back in 2018, Rockstar had 2,441 employees across 12 offices worldwide, according to Bloomberg. Now, the company employs some 4,711 workers, which makes the studio much larger than any of its direct competitors.
Schreier notes that "Red Dead Redemption 2 told a much more nuanced story [than GTA 5], with an emphasis on realism sometimes at the expense of fun. GTA 6 tries to find a balance between the two, but it seems to look far more toward [Red Dead 2] for inspiration: a game in which you can still throw $20 bills at strippers and mow down pedestrians, but one that also wants you to empathize with its Bonnie-and-Clyde-inspired protagonists." So it seems that despite all the internet chatter about in-game cocaine use and Jason and Lucia's nudity, players can still expect a prestige TV-worthy narrative from GTA 6. Confirming a longstanding rumor, Schreier reports that an early codename for GTA 6 was Project Americas, "because it aimed to feature big swaths of land across both North and South America." Later on in development, that scope would be narrowed to Miami and its surroundings.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
