GTA 6 was meant to cover half a continent: what Bloomberg uncovered about its eight-year development

GTA 6 started in 2015 as "Project Americas", a game meant to span large parts of North and South America before it shrank down to Vice City, according to the huge feature Jason Schreier published in Bloomberg yesterday. Rockstar opened the doors of Rockstar North to Bloomberg, and its three directors talk about eight years of development, the delays, Jason and Lucia and what comes next. Here are the juiciest bits.

What was Project Americas?

It was GTA 6's codename, and the plan was massive. According to Bloomberg, it all kicked off in 2015, when Rob Nelson and other Rockstar leads flew to Miami on the first research trip. The original idea was a game covering large chunks of North and South America.

The name had been floating around as a rumor for years, but this is the first time people at Rockstar have confirmed it on the record. Over time the map was cut back until it settled on Vice City and its surroundings: the Leonida we know, which still doubles the size of GTA V's map.

Why has GTA 6 taken so long?

Eight long years, and not for just one reason. Bloomberg points to several:

• Red Dead Redemption 2 swallowed everything. Rockstar wanted to make GTA 6 alongside RDR2, but finishing the western pulled in almost the entire company. That pushed the next GTA back by years.
• A change at the top. After Dan Houser left, development ended up in the hands of three directors: Rob Nelson, Aaron Garbut and Phil Hooker. Some staff complained about slow decisions and clashing ideas.
• The story was there, the game wasn't. By late 2019 the skeleton of Jason and Lucia's story already existed, but the gameplay still had no shape. Nelson describes it as a dark period.
• COVID. The pandemic shut down motion capture studios and made remote work harder. Nelson says keeping a team together in those conditions was really hard.
• Rebuilding systems. Garbut admits that this time they rebuilt a lot from scratch. It wasn't until 2022 that enough pieces were working to actually see the game.

Then came the two delays you already know about: from 2025 to May 26, 2026, and from there to November 19. According to the feature, when Jennifer Kolbe told Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick about the second one, his first reaction was: "You're kidding. Please tell me you're kidding." He came around once he heard the reasons.

What does it reveal about Jason and Lucia?

That making them work together was one of the hardest parts. Jason and Lucia don't just team up on missions: they can hang out and do things together in the open world. Bloomberg's example is pure GTA: a text from Lucia, a date in a park, a chat about an old run-in with her mother, a trip to the gym… and, if you feel like it, robbing a store together and fleeing the cops while still flirting.

That took some very complex companion AI (no generative AI involved). The directors even debated whether all that work was worth it before deciding the game needed it. If you want to know how far that relationship goes, we covered what happens if you ignore Lucia.

How much realism is too much?

That was another big debate. The team argued over whether you should have to grab a beer from the fridge and pay for it, or buy the ingredients before cooking. The verdict: too much realism makes everyday stuff a chore, so they aimed for a middle ground.

With NPCs it went the other way. After the first trailer, the number of characters that had to be written and animated was, as Nelson puts it, terrifying. Rockstar opened a studio in Los Angeles just for them.

The anecdote that sums it up best comes from Phil Hooker: while playtesting, he was about to start a mission and ended up chaining together a crash, a road rage fight, an insult from a pedestrian, a robbery at an unattended store, a chase, a stolen car and a raid on a compound. Two hours later, the mission still hadn't started.

Leaks, crunch and the numbers

• Leaks. According to Bloomberg, the 2022 breach got in through a phishing attack on the internal Slack. Garbut compares it to someone going through your dirty laundry: "It's like they're inside your head." Since then, Rockstar requires staff in the office five days a week and limits access to its tools from home.
• Headcount. From 2,441 employees in 2018 to 4,711 in August 2026, spread across 12 studios.
• Budget. Rockstar won't give a figure, but denies it tops $1.5 billion. Bloomberg estimates it's north of $1 billion.
• Crunch. Kolbe insists: "We're not going to finish this game by crunching." That said, she admits it hasn't been fully eliminated. Rockstar has hired more people and changed its overtime rules. The 34 firings in 2025, many of them employees trying to unionize, are still pending before an employment tribunal.

When is GTA 6 Online coming? And the next game?

Rockstar wouldn't talk about online in the feature: right now it's all about selling the game. What it does make clear is that the next one won't take as long. According to Hooker, the engine, tools and team built for this project will let them move faster. They point to GTA: Vice City, made in under a year on GTA III's tech. And Garbut sums it up: "The last 30 years has been practice for where we got to here."

And the release date? Schreier visited Rockstar North in Edinburgh in late September, with the team hunting bugs, and writes that everything points to GTA 6 launching on November 19. The feature also includes two previously unseen official screenshots, which for now can only be seen on Bloomberg.