Who is making GTA 6?

Is Rockstar North the studio behind GTA 6?

Rockstar Games is the name on the game. Take-Two’s December 2023 announcement calls Rockstar Games a publishing label of Take-Two, and PlayStation’s store page lists Rockstar Games as publisher. Take-Two describes itself as developing and publishing mainly through its labels, Rockstar among them.

The studio comes from press reporting. TROISCOULEURS visited Rockstar North in Edinburgh and described it as the place where GTA 6 is being developed, and Dazed and Kotaku both give Rob Nelson’s title as “head of development and co-studio head at Rockstar North”. Take-Two’s announcement doesn’t name a developing studio, so treat Rockstar North as the lead studio on reported evidence, not as a Take-Two statement. For the company’s longer story, see our Rockstar Games page.

Which Rockstar leads have spoken about it?

Rob Nelson is the most visible. He gave TROISCOULEURS an interview and played the game in front of its reporter, and he has also spoken to Dazed, IGN and Famitsu. Aaron Garbut is the other senior name: VGC, reporting on Game Informer’s preview, calls him head of development/co-studio head at Rockstar Games and says he described the map as about twice the size of GTA V’s.

Dazed names Rupert Humphries as Rockstar’s senior vice president of narrative and quotes him on the story and on the team’s research trips. It also quotes Jamie-Lee Lloyd as senior art director for characters and Stu Petri as vice president of 2D/UI design, and VGC quotes Owen Shepherd, via Game Informer, as vice president of art for lighting and rendering. Titles here are the ones those outlets gave, not a Rockstar org chart.

What is Sam Houser’s role?

Take-Two’s 2023 release quotes Sam Houser as Founder of Rockstar Games, and that is the only role we can source. Nothing we read says what he does day to day on GTA 6, and we don’t guess. He is one of the founders in the company history on our Rockstar page.

Does Take-Two make the game too?

Take-Two is the parent company and the investor-facing voice: it announced the game and reports on its schedule to investors. Kotaku, summarising a Bloomberg report, says Rockstar’s head of publishing Jennifer Kolbe twice phoned Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick to ask for more time. That is a reported account of how the delays came about, not a Take-Two statement. For the schedule, see how long GTA 6 has been in development.

Is it only one studio?

Press reports point to more than one office. Dazed says Rockstar’s team is now more than twice the size it was when Red Dead Redemption 2 came out, that it has offices worldwide, and that a Los Angeles branch works almost entirely on the game’s pedestrians. It gives no headcount, and Rockstar hasn’t published a list of which studios work on GTA 6. We haven’t used any staff list from outside Rockstar’s own materials.

What we don’t know yet

Rockstar hasn’t said which of its studios work on GTA 6 or how many people are on it. A credits list hasn’t been published yet, and we don’t use leaked ones. Houser’s exact role, the size of the team and the split between studios are all unannounced.