Rockstar has never been a small studio, but the numbers behind GTA VI put its scale in a new light. In a wide-ranging interview with Bloomberg, senior leadership said the company employed 2,441 people when Red Dead Redemption 2 shipped in 2018. By 2026 it employs 4,711 staff across 12 offices. Of those, 4,020 work in development and QA, and 690 sit in publishing. That is roughly double the headcount of eight years ago, spent building one game.
The interesting part is what Rockstar says that buys them going forward. Co-head of development Phil Hooker told Bloomberg that the next project will not take another eight years. "The engine, the tools and the team we've built during this project will allow us to do things more quickly," he said. He added that he feels confident the studio can "build on top of this and go more sideways than upwards to build more compelling content." Head of publishing Jennifer Kolbe framed GTA VI the same way, calling it a foundation the studio can build new content on at a faster pace.
Set that against the actual timeline and it gets more concrete. GTA VI was announced in 2023 with a 2025 window. It slipped to May 26, 2026, then to its current November 19 date. Two delays, both explained publicly as polish, both landing inside the same fiscal year. Kolbe described breaking the news to Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick: "I think he said, 'You're kidding. Please tell me you're kidding.' But once we talked through why, he got it." She added that Rockstar was lucky Zelnick is reasonable, "because a lot of people would say, 'You'd just better figure out how to ship it.'"
The Bloomberg interview also covered the thing Rockstar almost never talks about, which is leaks. The studio's first major breach came in September 2022, a network intrusion that put 90 in-development clips into the wild. Rockstar North co-head Aaron Garbut described the feeling plainly: "It feels like somebody's wading through your dirty washing. It's like they're inside your head." Security tightened afterward, and the studio ended remote work in April 2024 as a direct response. The current leak wave, a hacker group that claims to hold a build, is a separate problem and is covered in its own watch.
To be clear about what is and is not news here. The staffing figures and the quotes come from a Bloomberg feature published this week, reported through outlets including GamesIndustry.biz. Rockstar did not announce a new game, a new date, or a change to GTA VI's platforms. The eight-years line is a statement of intent, not a schedule for anything specific. There is no confirmed follow-up title and no confirmed timeline for one.
What the story does establish is the shape of the company that will carry GTA VI forward. A studio that doubled in size, kept its headcount through two delays, and is now telling reporters it intends to reuse what it built rather than start over. For a fan base still waiting on November 19, the useful signal is not the promise. It is the number: 4,711 people, and the fact that the leadership is now comfortable talking publicly about what comes after.