Bloomberg's GTA 6 feature

Bloomberg Businessweek published "The Making of Grand Theft Auto VI" on October 14, 2026, a feature by Jason Schreier built on a daylong interview at Rockstar North in Edinburgh with head of publishing Jennifer Kolbe and development heads Rob Nelson, Aaron Garbut and Phil Hooker. Bloomberg calls it the first time Rockstar has openly discussed the game's development challenges. The headlines: Kolbe rejected the $1.5 billion budget rumor, she took both delays to Take-Two, and Rockstar says it tried to finish without crunch.

The budget rumor Kolbe rejected#

Rockstar would not say what GTA 6 cost, but Kolbe "did shoot down a popular rumor that it surpassed the $1.5 billion it cost to build Dubai's Burj Khalifa," Bloomberg reports. Bloomberg's own estimate, not a Rockstar figure, is that the game "might have cost more than double" the $500 million that other publishers try to stay under. Rockstar has grown to 4,711 staff across 12 offices, almost twice its 2018 size, and the game took more than eight years. Our GTA 6 budget explainer collects every confirmed statement and estimate in one place.

Two delays and a call to Zelnick#

Leaders say they believed the 2025 date in the first trailer; staff were more skeptical. Kolbe called Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick to move the game to May 2026, then again for November. "I think he said, 'You're kidding. Please tell me you're kidding,'" she recalls.

Leadership names no single dramatic cause. Nelson calls projections for non-player character work "horrifying," and Rockstar built a Los Angeles studio just to write and direct NPCs. "We could hit that schedule, but it won't be the game we want to make," Hooker says. Our GTA 6 release date history has the full timeline.

Crunch and the five-day office rule#

After Red Dead Redemption 2, "I said, 'We're not going to finish this game by crunching,'" Kolbe recalls. Rockstar added staff, tightened scheduling and offered paid time off for extra hours. "It's not been perfect, but it's certainly better than Red Dead II was," she says.

By 2024, Rockstar required staff in the office five days a week, citing security, and GTA 6 developers could not reach its tools from home. Kolbe says the policy will be reexamined after launch but doubts a switch to a common hybrid model: "I think if we did not have a game that people wanted to steal as much, maybe it would be an easier conversation." The feature also covers last year's firing of 34 employees, most of them part of a union drive; Rockstar says they shared confidential information, which the group disputes.

What Schreier saw of the game#

In his October 16 Game On newsletter, Schreier described watching Nelson play: Jason called Lucia, they held hands in a park and went to the gym, then robbed the back office of what looked like a gas station without alerting anyone. "There's so many of these little interiors, hundreds of them, that you can go and explore," the newsletter quotes, as MP1st also reported. Schreier's own read is that the story is "more inspired by Red Dead Redemption II than Grand Theft Auto V." See our gameplay features guide, and how realistic GTA 6 is for the detail systems, the sweat script and the weapon wheel decision.

The weapon wheel that came back#

The newsletter notes "endless" experimentation on features like the weapon wheel. In a YouTube video, Schreier added that Rockstar wanted Red Dead-style limited loadouts and worried that a wheel with empty slots would remind players what they could not carry. The team spent "months, if not years, trying a million different things," including "trays and webs" and no wheel at all, before going back to a wheel, Dexerto reported.

What Rockstar did not discuss#

Bloomberg says the developers are not yet talking about a planned online component, which it reports is expected in 2027. Rockstar has not announced one, so treat that as unconfirmed; our GTA 6 Online explainer tracks what is official. The leads do promise their next release will not take another eight years.