How GTA 6 was made: the key takeaways from Bloomberg's Rockstar report

GTA 6 began as something even bigger than the game arriving next month. Before it was Leonida, it was Project Americas, a crime game meant to stretch across large parts of North and South America.

That’s one of the headline details from Jason Schreier’s Bloomberg feature on the making of GTA 6, published on October 14, 2026. It explains why the game took so long, from a 2015 research trip to Miami to a studio that has nearly doubled since Red Dead Redemption 2. It also covers the two delays, crunch, leaks and what Rockstar says about its next game.

Our read: this is a rare on-the-record look inside Rockstar, and it lands five weeks before launch. It won’t tell you what GTA 6 plays like. It does explain why the wait felt endless.

What the Bloomberg GTA 6 report covers

Schreier set expectations before publication. “If you’re expecting a list of new gameplay mechanics, you’ll be disappointed,” he wrote, according to iXBT. The feature is a “why it took so long” story, not a feature list.

It’s built on access. Schreier visited Rockstar North in Edinburgh in late September 2026, saw the game running while staff fixed bugs ahead of launch, and spoke to Rockstar’s leadership on the record. Notebookcheck notes the piece also includes rare photos.

We couldn’t access Bloomberg’s article directly, so this summary draws on detailed coverage from Portal GTA 6, VGTimes, GameSpot, Kotaku and Notebookcheck, and attributes the reporting to Bloomberg.

GTA 6 started as Project Americas

According to Bloomberg, the first research trip was to Miami in 2015, led by Rob Nelson. The codename, Project Americas, isn’t new: Schreier first reported it in 2022. What the feature adds is the original ambition. The game was meant to cover large parts of North and South America before Rockstar narrowed it to Vice City and the state of Leonida.

Why it shrank is the one question the report leaves open. Notebookcheck points out that it doesn’t clearly explain why the wider scope was dropped, and Rockstar hasn’t said either.

The likely takeaway for players is simpler: Leonida is the version Rockstar committed to, and our GTA 6 map covers every region confirmed so far.

Why GTA 6 took so long

The short answer is that several problems stacked on top of each other, and Rockstar’s own history made the first one worse.

Red Dead Redemption 2 came first

Rockstar originally wanted to build GTA 6 alongside Red Dead Redemption 2, Bloomberg reports. Finishing the western pulled most of the company onto it, which pushed GTA 6 back several years. Afterward, Rockstar changed its approach and focused nearly the whole studio on one big project at a time.

That explains the gap better than any rumor did. GTA V launched in 2013, which is where the “13 years” framing comes from, but full production on GTA 6 only ramped up from roughly 2018.

Three directors, a pandemic and a “dark period”

Several key people left after Red Dead Redemption 2, including co-founder Dan Houser. GTA 6 is now run by three heads of development: Rob Nelson, Phil Hooker and Aaron Garbut.

VGTimes says some staff complained of slow decisions and conflicting ideas under that setup. Nelson told Bloomberg he knew, but argued a single director would face similar problems. He also described a “dark period” when the game’s overall vision wasn’t clear. The pandemic shut down performance-capture studios, and rapid hiring made communication harder.

The story itself was settled earlier than you might expect. The skeleton of Jason and Lucia’s story was in place by the end of 2019, according to the report. Our GTA 6 characters guide has their official profiles.

Not enough people to write the world

One cause of delay is unusually concrete: Rockstar didn’t have the capacity to write and animate all the characters its world needed. The fix was a dedicated Los Angeles studio of writers, producers and directors working on that.

The headcount tells the same story. Bloomberg puts Rockstar at 2,441 staff when Red Dead Redemption 2 launched in 2018 and 4,711 today, across 12 offices.

GTA 6 development timeline

Put the reporting next to Rockstar’s public milestones and the shape of the project becomes clear. Most of the long middle stretch happened out of sight.

Year	Milestone	Source
2013	GTA V launches	Rockstar
2015	First research trip to Miami; codename Project Americas	Bloomberg
2018	Red Dead Redemption 2 launches; Rockstar has 2,441 staff; GTA 6 ramps up	Bloomberg
Late 2019	Skeleton of Jason and Lucia’s story settled	Bloomberg
2020 onward	Pandemic halts performance capture; rapid hiring	Bloomberg
December 2023	Trailer 1 promises 2025	Rockstar
2024	Five-day office attendance required	Bloomberg
2025	Two delays: first to May 2026, then to November 19, 2026	Rockstar
August 2026	“CyberLeek” leak	Bloomberg
October 14, 2026	Bloomberg feature published	Bloomberg
October 15, 2026	Launch trailer released	Rockstar
November 19, 2026	GTA 6 launches on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S	Rockstar

What the report reveals about GTA 6’s design

Schreier promised no feature list, but a few design details made it through, and they say a lot about Rockstar’s priorities.

The biggest is companion AI. Jason and Lucia’s relationship had to carry over into the open world, not just scripted missions, which required sophisticated AI for whoever isn’t under your control. Leadership debated whether it was worth the effort and decided it was.

Then there’s the beer. According to VGTimes, the team debated whether buying a beer should be instant or a multi-step routine. The coverage we’ve seen doesn’t say which way it went, but the argument itself tells you how granular Rockstar’s design debates get.

Hooker’s playtest anecdote is the most encouraging detail for anyone who loved GTA V’s chaos. After hitting another car, he set off a chain of fights, thefts and police chases that pulled him away from a story mission for about two hours. For everything confirmed so far, see our GTA 6 gameplay guide.

How Take-Two’s CEO reacted to the second GTA 6 delay

Rockstar’s head of publishing, Jennifer Kolbe, phoned Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick for both delays. The first moved GTA 6 from 2025, the window promised by Trailer 1 in December 2023, to May 2026. The second pushed it to November 19, 2026.

The second call didn’t go smoothly. Kolbe recalled Zelnick saying, “You’re kidding. Please tell me you’re kidding,” GameSpot reports. “But once we talked through why, he got it.”

Zelnick has framed delays differently, calling one a “wise investment in time and financial resources” when it lets a game reach its full potential, per GameSpot. Hooker said an earlier release was possible but wouldn’t have matched the team’s vision, and that the game is “never completely settled.” He added: “Even within the last few months, we’ve changed things.”

Crunch, leaks and the 34 fired employees

On crunch, Kolbe said Rockstar didn’t want to finish GTA 6 through prolonged overtime. The changes she described were more staff, revised planning, and paid time off or extra pay for extra hours. She admitted individual experiences may differ. Schreier, who has spoken to dozens of Rockstar employees over the years, reports largely positive staff views.

That caveat is worth holding onto. In a studio of 4,711 people across 12 offices, “largely positive” and “experiences may differ” can both be true, and the second phrase is Rockstar’s own admission that the policy hasn’t landed evenly.

Security is a sorer subject. After the leaks, Rockstar required office work five days a week from 2024 and blocked access to its tools from home. The August 2026 “CyberLeek” leak raised internal doubts about whether that works.

Our read: that’s the uncomfortable tension at the center of Rockstar’s approach. Staff gave up working from home in the name of stopping leaks, and two years later a major leak happened anyway. If the rule couldn’t prevent CyberLeek, the case for keeping it after launch gets harder to make.

The report also covers the 2025 firing of 34 employees. They say it was union-busting; Rockstar says they leaked confidential information. The case was still before an employment tribunal in Scotland when the feature was published, so neither side’s account has been tested yet.

How much did GTA 6 cost to make?

Rockstar won’t say. Kolbe dismissed the rumored figure of more than $1.5 billion, while Schreier suggests development may have cost more than $1 billion. According to Portal GTA 6, Bloomberg considers it almost certainly the most expensive game ever made.

Whatever the final figure, you’ll pay the same at the till: $79.99 for the Standard Edition and $99.99 for the Ultimate Edition in the US. Our GTA 6 editions and price guide breaks down what each includes.

Will Rockstar’s next game take as long?

Rockstar insists 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, per Kotaku. Garbut was blunter: “We foundationally changed a lot of stuff on this project.” Now that it’s done, he said, “we’re not going to rip it apart.”

Bloomberg compares the situation to Vice City arriving about a year after GTA III. Rockstar didn’t name or date its next game, so treat any specific rumor about it with suspicion.

What the report means for the November 19 release

Schreier writes that November 19 does appear to be the real date, with the caveat that you can never be 100% sure until the game runs on your machine. The day after the feature went live, Rockstar released the launch trailer, captured entirely on PS5 and set to Justice’s “Flower in a Hurricane.”

Play video: Grand Theft Auto VI Launch Trailer

The next checkpoint is Take-Two’s final earnings report before launch. Yahoo Finance says it’s on November 9, while GameSpot says November 10. GameSpot also reports that physical copies reach stores on November 12 with a code in the box and no disc, and the game won’t unlock until November 19. Our GTA 6 preload guide covers the reported November 12 preload, and our launch trailer breakdown explains every scene.

A PC version still isn’t announced. VGC reports, citing GamesBeat, that it’s coming before the end of March 2027, but Rockstar hasn’t confirmed that. Our GTA 6 PC release date guide tracks it.

The short version

Bloomberg’s October 14, 2026 feature by Jason Schreier shows GTA 6 began as Project Americas in 2015, was pushed back years by Red Dead Redemption 2, and was shaped by leadership changes, the pandemic and a shortage of people to write its world. Rockstar grew from 2,441 to 4,711 staff, Take-Two’s CEO reacted to the second delay with “Please tell me you’re kidding,” and the budget remains undisclosed, though Schreier suggests more than $1 billion. Rockstar says its next game will come faster. For now, every sign points to GTA 6 launching on November 19, 2026, on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.