The year 2018 represents a pivotal hinge point in Rockstar Games' production history, marking the transition from the eight-year development cycle of Red Dead Redemption 2 (RDR2) toward the initial, formative stages of what would become Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA VI). While Rockstar had reportedly conducted preliminary conceptual work on a successor to Grand Theft Auto V as early as 2014 (Wikipedia, 2026a), the year RDR2 shipped to retail — 26 October 2018 — is widely regarded as the genuine starting point of GTA VI's early development. According to Bloomberg reporting that has been corroborated across multiple outlets, "early development" of GTA VI began "in late 2018 following Red Dead Redemption 2" (Wikipedia, 2026a). This report examines the post-RDR2 ramp-up, the internal team rotations that followed Rockstar's shift to a single unified studio structure, and the cultural and managerial conditions under which the project's earliest groundwork was laid.
By the time RDR2 launched in late October 2018, Rockstar Games had absorbed effectively all of its global studios into one mega-team to push the Western prequel across the finish line. Roughly 1,600 to 2,000 staff are reported to have contributed to RDR2's production, making it among the most expensive video games ever made, with combined development and marketing budgets estimated between US$370 million and US$540 million (Wikipedia, 2026b). The launch was a commercial triumph — US$725 million in opening-weekend revenue and the second-largest entertainment debut in history — but it came at a notable human cost. Co-founder Dan Houser publicly admitted that senior writing staff had been "working 100-hour weeks" several times during 2018 (Schreier, cited in Wikipedia, 2026b), a comment that ignited a wider press investigation by Kotaku and Eurogamer into Rockstar's culture of "mandatory" overtime and sustained crunch. These revelations directly shaped the managerial philosophy that would be applied to GTA VI's earliest production stages.
With RDR2 gold-mastered and on shelves, Rockstar's massive unified workforce was suddenly freed from the most acute pressure of shipping. Industry reporter Jason Schreier, writing for Bloomberg, has been the principal chronicler of what happened next. According to his sources, by late 2018 Rockstar formally pivoted into early development on the next mainline Grand Theft Auto, internally code-named "Project Americas" (Wikipedia, 2026a). Pre-production activities during this window included high-level narrative scoping, prototype map planning around a Vice City/Florida-inspired setting, and engine experimentation built atop the Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE) iteration that had powered RDR2. The Know also reported in 2018 that the game was being planned with Vice City as its primary setting and originally included portions of South America (Wikipedia, 2026a) — an early scope that would later be trimmed.
Crucially, Schreier reported that GTA VI was being conceived deliberately as "a moderately sized release" intended to expand post-launch, an explicit attempt to "avoid its predecessors' developer crunch" (Schreier, cited in Wikipedia, 2026a). This represents a clear pivot in production philosophy compared with RDR2's all-hands marathon.
The post-RDR2 period also produced significant personnel turbulence. With RDR2's online component, Red Dead Online, still requiring live-service support after its November 2018 beta launch, Rockstar split its workforce: a smaller team was rotated onto Red Dead Online live-ops, while the bulk of senior designers, animators, writers, and engineers were gradually folded onto Project Americas pre-production through late 2018 and into 2019. Rockstar's longstanding practice of treating its global studios "presented simply as Rockstar Games" rather than discrete entities (Wikipedia, 2026b) meant that staff at Rockstar North (Edinburgh), Rockstar San Diego, Rockstar Toronto, Rockstar India, and Rockstar Leeds were re-tasked rather than reorganised. Internal Slack groups — later infamous as the vector for the 2022 leak — became the principal coordination tool across this distributed pre-production team (Wikipedia, 2026a).
Reports also describe the beginning of an exodus of senior creative leadership during this period, culminating in Dan Houser's departure in 2020 — making GTA VI the first mainline GTA since 1997 not written by him (Wikipedia, 2026a). Although Houser's exit fell outside 2018, his disengagement from day-to-day creative direction is generally understood to have started in the aftermath of RDR2's shipping.
The late-2018 pre-production phase therefore set the foundational DNA of GTA VI: a Vice City setting, Bonnie-and-Clyde-styled dual protagonists including the franchise's first non-optional female lead, a planned robust online component, and — perhaps most importantly — a managerial commitment, however imperfectly executed, to break the crunch cycle.
Wikipedia (2026a) Grand Theft Auto VI. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_VI (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Wikipedia (2026b) Red Dead Redemption 2. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Dead_Redemption_2 (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Schreier, J. (2022) 'Take-Two's Rockstar Games confirms Grand Theft Auto VI is in development', Bloomberg News, 4 February. Available at: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-04/take-two-s-rockstar-confirms-grand-theft-auto-vi-in-development (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
MacDonald, K. (2022) 'Rockstar owner issues takedowns after Grand Theft Auto VI leak', The Guardian, 19 September. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/games/2022/sep/19/rockstar-owner-issues-takedowns-after-grand-theft-auto-vi-leak (Accessed: 14 May 2026).