The Making of GTA VI: Everything Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier Revealed About Rockstar

👁 113 reads

For the first time, Rockstar has explained on the record why Grand Theft Auto VI has taken more than eight years. Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier spent a full day inside Rockstar North in Edinburgh with the studio’s leadership, and his cover story “The Making of Grand Theft Auto VI” went live on October 14, 2026. I went through more than twenty write-ups of the piece and lined them up with what Schreier has reported about Rockstar since 2018. Here is what is genuinely new, what only looks new, and what it says about how the biggest games of the decade get made - with or without AI.

The short version

• GTA VI started in 2015 as Project Americas, a map that would have stretched across large parts of North and South America. It was cut back to Vice City and the state of Leonida.
• Red Dead Redemption 2 swallowed almost the whole company and pushed GTA VI back by years.
• Rockstar grew from 2,441 people in 2018 to 4,711 in August 2026, across 12 offices. After Dan Houser left, three heads of development replaced a single creative director.
• Rob Nelson calls the post-2019 stretch “a dark period”. The game only came together around 2022.
• Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick’s reaction to the second delay, as told by Jennifer Kolbe: “You’re kidding. Please tell me you’re kidding.”
• Rockstar promises its next game won’t take eight years. And according to Take-Two, generative AI has “zero part” in what Rockstar is building.

Project Americas: the GTA that was meant to be twice as big

Work began in 2015 with a research trip to Miami. The codename was Project Americas, and the first plan was a map spanning big chunks of both continents. Over time the scope was narrowed to Vice City and its surroundings in the fictional state of Leonida that we know from the trailers.

The codename itself isn’t new - Schreier first mentioned it in 2022. What’s new is why the early years were so slow. The plan was parallel production: GTA VI at Rockstar North in Edinburgh, Red Dead Redemption 2 at Rockstar San Diego. But RDR2 grew so large that most of the company, including top leadership, was pulled onto it to get it finished. GTA VI was sidelined for several years. After RDR2, Rockstar moved to a model where most people work on one game at a time.

The numbers behind the scale

After Dan Houser: three bosses instead of one director

Several key people left after RDR2, including co-founder and head writer Dan Houser. Rockstar didn’t replace him with a new creative director. The game is run by three heads of development:

• Rob Nelson - co-head of Rockstar North, on the first Miami trip in 2015,
• Phil Hooker - technology and production,
• Aaron Garbut - art lead and also co-head of Rockstar North.

Not everyone liked the arrangement. According to Schreier’s sources, three heads meant three visions and decisions that dragged on.

“A dark period”: the pandemic and a game nobody could see whole

The strongest part of the story covers 2020 and 2021. On top of the missing single director came the pandemic: motion-capture stages shut down, communication between offices broke down, and experienced designers left, frustrated that the game wasn’t moving. Nelson calls it “a dark period” - the vision wasn’t clear and the team lacked faith in the project. Only around 2022 did the pieces start forming a full picture.

Schreier also describes debates that sound like jokes but were serious inside Rockstar. Should buying a beer mean walking to the fridge and paying at the till? Should a stat-boosting sandwich require buying the ingredients first? Every “yes” means dozens of animations and scripts, multiplied across an entire map.

NPCs outgrew the company - so Rockstar built a studio just for them

When the team estimated how many behaviours and animations its non-player characters would need, the result exceeded what Rockstar could produce. Nelson told Bloomberg the projections were “horrifying”. The fix was simple and expensive: Rockstar quickly built a new studio in Los Angeles with writers, producers and directors who work only on NPCs, and expanded its presence in India.

The best anecdote belongs to Phil Hooker. He sat down to test a story mission. On the way he had a fender-bender, the other driver came back for revenge, he walked into a store, got into a fight, robbed an empty till, fled the police, switched cars, stumbled on a stash, sold the loot to a fence and picked up a new lead. Two hours later he still hadn’t reached the mission. He says he remembers “the sheer fun of it”.

Jason and Lucia also share a life outside missions: texting, dates, a walk in the park, the gym, a store robbery, a police chase with flirting on the way. Rockstar cites Bonnie and Clyde. All of it runs on extensive character AI systems - the classic, hand-authored kind of game AI, not generative models.

Two delays and a phone call to Zelnick

When the first trailer promised 2025 in December 2023, Rockstar’s leadership genuinely believed it. Rank-and-file developers didn’t. The game slipped twice: to May 26, 2026, then to November 19, 2026. There was no single disaster - just a long list of things that couldn’t be finished in time. Hooker says they could have hit the schedule, “but it won’t be the game we want to make”.

Each time, Jennifer Kolbe, Rockstar’s head of publishing, called Strauss Zelnick. The second time, by her account, his first words were: “You’re kidding. Please tell me you’re kidding.” Once she walked him through the reasons, he agreed. Schreier believes November 19 looks real: during his visit in September the team was fixing bugs.

Crunch, five days in the office, leaks and a union fight

• Crunch: on RDR2 some staff worked 60-hour weeks for months. This time Rockstar added people, set more realistic schedules, offered paid time off for overtime and sometimes extra pay. Kolbe admits it wasn’t perfect.
• Office mandate: since 2024 everyone works on site five days a week, with no remote access to tools. Staff had to take leave to care for a sick child. It was the most criticised decision. Rules will be reviewed after launch.
• Leaks: in 2022 a hacker got into the company Slack and posted dozens of early clips. Garbut says it felt like “somebody’s wading through your dirty washing”. Another big leak followed in August 2026 despite tighter security.
• Union: Rockstar fired 34 people last year, most of them involved in organising a union. Rockstar cites leaks of confidential information on Discord; a tribunal ruling in Glasgow is expected at the end of October. Kolbe says that if the team wants a union, it will have one.

Budget: Rockstar denies one number

Rockstar doesn’t disclose the budget, but Kolbe denied the rumour that it passed $1.5 billion - roughly the cost of building the Burj Khalifa. Schreier still says it is almost certainly the most expensive game ever made. With analysts expecting 40 million copies and over $3 billion in the first four months, even that would pay off within weeks. A new GTA Online is planned for 2027.

The AI angle: two Schreier stories, two roads

Two days before the GTA VI story, Schreier reported that Epic Games had delayed its Disney game and moved it to an “AI-first” production model, with a memo line that travelled across the industry in hours: “No more hand-written code”. Rockstar went the other way. Every time scale became a problem, it answered with people - including a whole studio for NPCs.

Zelnick’s public line on AI has evolved, but one boundary hasn’t moved:

• February 2025: “artificial intelligence is an oxymoron”,
• October 2025: AI is “a combination of metadata with a parlor trick”,
• February 3, 2026: generative AI has “zero part” in what Rockstar is building - while Take-Two is “actively embracing” it with hundreds of pilots elsewhere,
• August 2026: AI tools “are not going to replace anyone”.

In August, Rob Nelson also said the GTA VI campaign contains no generative AI and no microtransactions. That doesn’t mean zero machine learning at Rockstar: the studio has advertised a machine-learning infrastructure role for the GTA Online economy and holds patents on ML for animation and character behaviour. In my view the reasons for keeping generative AI out of the game itself are practical as much as artistic: unclear copyright on generated assets for a franchise worth tens of billions, players who treat “made with AI” as an insult, and a production pipeline designed between 2015 and 2022, before these tools matured.

Next game: not another eight years

Hooker says the engine, tools and team built for GTA VI will let Rockstar move faster, going “more sideways than upwards”. Garbut says the foundations were rebuilt and won’t be torn apart again. The historical reference point: Vice City (2002) was made in under a year on GTA III’s technology. No title or date was given.

What Bloomberg did not report

• GTA VI on PC in Q1 2027 - that’s a GamesBeat report; Schreier said his story had nothing to do with it.
• “600,000 NPC animations” - a figure from an August New York Times piece.
• The grid-style cover art born after 9/11 - from IGN’s interview with Dan Houser published the same day.

Timeline

• 2015 - Miami research trip, Project Americas begins.
• 2018 - RDR2 ships; Schreier reports on its crunch.
• late 2019 - Jason and Lucia’s story outline is done.
• 2020 - Dan Houser leaves; the “dark period” begins.
• September 2022 - the Slack hack and video leak.
• December 2023 - first trailer, 93 million views in a day, “2025”.
• May 2, 2025 - delay to May 26, 2026.
• November 6, 2025 - delay to November 19, 2026.
• August 2026 - new leak; Rockstar has 4,711 employees.
• October 14, 2026 - Bloomberg’s cover story.
• November 9, 2026 - Take-Two earnings, ten days before launch.
• November 19, 2026 - GTA VI launches on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.

My take

Three conclusions. First, the delays came from ambition rather than chaos - Rockstar literally hired a new studio so that pedestrians would behave like people, which is good news for anyone fearing a broken launch. Second, November 19 looks very likely: the studio is polishing, and the whole industry has built its calendar around that date. Third, the cost for the people inside was real - five days in the office, a “dark period”, leaks and a union dispute. Rockstar is talking about it openly for the first time, though the choice of interviewees is careful and this is still a story the studio controls.

When did Bloomberg publish its GTA VI story?

On October 14, 2026. It is the cover story of the November issue of Bloomberg Businessweek, written by Jason Schreier, with a video version.

Will GTA VI be delayed again?

Nothing suggests it. Schreier considers November 19, 2026 a real date, and in September the studio was already fixing bugs.

How much did GTA VI cost?

Rockstar doesn’t disclose it. It only denied that the budget exceeded $1.5 billion. Schreier says it is almost certainly the most expensive game ever made.

Does GTA VI use generative AI?

According to Take-Two and Rockstar, no. Bloomberg’s story only describes classic AI systems that drive characters in the game.

Google · Your sourcesQuantslant higher in your Google - one clickAdd to preferred sources →

Sources

• Bloomberg, Jason Schreier: The Making of Grand Theft Auto VI (Oct 14, 2026)
• GamesRadar+: Project Americas
• GamesRadar+: Zelnick and the delays
• GameSpot: next game won’t take 8 years
• VICE: Rockstar on the leaks
• Insider Gaming: the LA studio for NPCs
• Wccftech: Phil Hooker’s two hours
• Nintendo Life: Epic’s “No more hand-written code”
• PC Gamer: Zelnick on generative AI (Feb 2026)
• TweakTown: no generative AI in the GTA VI campaign