It’s been reported that Rockstar Games has spent more than £2.7billion developing Grand Theft Auto 6.
Grand Theft Auto 6 has been in development since 2019 at Rockstar Games and will reportedly feature a number of revolutionary features. Earlier this month, one former developer claimed he spent 39 months making broken glass look more realistic in the game and last year, a report claimed Rockstar had spent between $200million and $300million to create hyper-realistic water in Grand Theft Auto 6 with a team of 20 working on the project.
It had been reported that Grand Theft Auto 6 could cost Rockstar Games up to £2billion to develop but one investigative YouTuber has claimed that estimate is too low.
Using information about average salaries as well as Rockstar Games’ publicly available UK financial records, Saukko505 believes that the company spent £2.6billion on staffing between April 1 2019 (a few months after Rockstar’s previous game Red Dead Redemption 2 was released) and November 19, 2026 (Grand Theft Auto 6’s release date), with a further £100million spent on leasing costs and office supplies for its UK offices.
He also believes a further £200million was spent on leasing costs for Rockstar’s Indian, North American and Canadian offices, while £375 million will be spent on marketing and between £7.5million and £75million on song licensing, but those are just “rough” estimates.
BREAKING: Rockstar North has spent over $2.1 BILLION on salaries and wages since 2019, an official UK government document reveals.
GTA 6 is set to be even more expensive than previously thought, it will likely cost over $3 billion in total. pic.twitter.com/e5PuStVX3I
— Grand Theft Auto 6 Alerts (@GTA6Alerts) March 29, 2026
In total, Saukko believes that Rockstar Games has spent between £2.7billion and £3.7billion developing Grand Theft Auto 6, which would make it the “most expensive media product” of all time. 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens is believed to be the most expensive movie ever made, with reported production costs of $536million while Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2 reportedly cost $540million.
That number is just an “estimate” and “might not represent the real budget” of GTA 6, added Sakura who isn’t an accountant and only had access to public information.
Earlier this week, journalist Reece ‘Kiwi Talkz’ Reilly used the same information and claimed the development of GTA 6 could cost Rockstar $3billion. “I have been saying for ages that it will take other developers 15-20 years to match what Rockstar is doing with GTA 6, I wasn’t exaggerating, some of the stuff they have planned is crazy ambitious. Come November you will see where all the money went,” he added.
In other news, superstar DJ Dimitri Vegas will be joining the cast of 007: First Light and to celebrate, has shared a ravey remix of the iconic James Bond theme.
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