Rockstar's next game won't take eight years to make: "The engine, the tools and the team we've built during GTA 6 will allow us to do things more quickly"
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Rockstar Games leadership expects future development cycles to shorten following the massive expansion of their team and infrastructure during the production of GTA 6. The studio now employs over 4,000 development staff and plans to leverage new tools to release content more efficiently.
Why it matters
This shift in strategy addresses the industry-wide challenge of ballooning development times and costs for AAA video games.
Team has more than doubled since Red Dead Redemption 2's launch in 2018, with over 4,000 working in development and QA
In a wide-ranging interview with Bloomberg , Rockstar senior leadership said that when Red Dead Redemption 2 launched in 2018, the studio had 2,441 employees.
By 2026, Rockstar employed 4,711 staff across 12 offices. Of these, 4,020 work in development and QA, while 690 are in publishing.
Rockstar's leadership stated that future games will be developed more quickly, as GTA 6 "is a foundation upon which they can build new content at a faster pace."
"The engine, the tools and the team we've built during this project will allow us to do things more quickly," said co-head of development Phil Hooker. "I feel confident that we can build on top of this and go more sideways than upwards to build more compelling content."
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