Rockstar says its next game won't take eight years, as GTA 6 team passes 4,700 staff

Rockstar Games says it will not repeat the eight-year gap between Red Dead Redemption 2 and Grand Theft Auto 6. In an interview with Bloomberg, reported by GamesIndustry.biz, senior leadership described GTA 6 as a foundation for building new content at a faster pace. Co-head of development Phil Hooker said he is confident the studio can build on it and go "more sideways than upwards."

The headcount figures give some scale. Rockstar had 2,441 employees when Red Dead Redemption 2 launched in 2018. By 2026 it had 4,711 staff across 12 offices. Of those, 4,020 work in development and QA and 690 work in publishing.

GTA 6 was announced in 2023 with a planned 2025 release. It was postponed to May 26, 2026, then rescheduled to its current date of November 19. Head of publishing Jennifer Kolbe said she told Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick about both delays and that he accepted the reasons once they were explained. She added that the studio has been lucky not to be told to just ship the game. Zelnick previously told GamesIndustry.biz that the delays did not worry him and that the game would still release in the same fiscal year as the earlier date.

Security was also covered. Rockstar suffered its first set of leaks in September 2022, caused by a network intrusion that exposed 90 in-development clips. Rockstar North co-head Aaron Garbut described the experience as invasive and hard to deal with emotionally. Rockstar tightened security afterward and ended remote work in April 2024. Kolbe said the security team would not like the game existing in that many environments.

A new set of leaks is ongoing. A hacker group that appears to possess a build of GTA 6 began circulating footage in August. Earlier this week it released more footage and threatened to leak the full build, including story mode, if Take-Two does not meet its demands. For developers, the main takeaway is Rockstar's stated intent: faster follow-up releases built on the GTA 6 tech and team. The source gives no details on what the next title is or when it will arrive.