Bloomberg Feature Reveals GTA 6 Began as a Game Spanning the Americas

With Grand Theft Auto 6 just five weeks from its November 19 console launch, Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier has published a sweeping behind-the-scenes account of how the game came to be — and what nearly prevented it from ever arriving. The feature, built on interviews with Rockstar executives and studio leadership, confirms that development began around 2015 under the internal codename “Project Americas,” an even more ambitious concept that would have stretched the game’s map across North and South America. That vision was eventually scaled back to the fictional Vice City and its surrounding region as the team grappled with the sheer scope of what they were building.

One of the most striking data points in the piece is the scale of Rockstar’s growth. The studio employed roughly 2,441 people when Red Dead Redemption 2 shipped in 2018; by August 2026 that number had grown to 4,711 across 12 offices worldwide. A dedicated Los Angeles studio was opened specifically to handle the volume of non-player character content and animation that the game demanded. Schreier reports that Red Dead Redemption 2 itself consumed so many years and resources that it effectively pushed GTA 6 back, and that Rockstar now prioritises concentrating most staff on a single flagship project at a time.

The feature also addresses the two major leaks that have dogged the project. The 2022 Slack breach, in which a hacker posted dozens of videos from an early build, is described by Rockstar head of development Aaron Garbut as “feel[ing] like somebody’s wading through your dirty washing.” Schreier reports that a second significant leak occurred in August 2026, despite the company having hardened its security in the intervening years. On the labour side, the feature covers the ongoing Glasgow employment tribunal involving 34 dismissed employees, with management saying it will recognise a union if staff want one while the former employees describe the dismissals as retaliation for organising.

Publishing head Jennifer Kolbe pushes back against the much-circulated .5 billion development cost rumour, though Rockstar declines to disclose actual figures. Industry analysts are projecting 40 million copies sold in the first months and over billion in early revenue, though those figures are estimates rather than company data. Perhaps most notably for fans wondering whether a nine-year wait will repeat itself, Schreier writes that Rockstar leadership says it does not intend for its next major release to take another eight years.