Rockstar has insisted GTA 6 did not cost more than $1.5 billion to make, countering an online rumor, but it’s still probably the most expensive video game of all time.
In a sweeping report by Bloomberg into the making of GTA 6, Rockstar head of publishing Jennifer Kolbe insisted a rumor that GTA 6’s budget was more than the $1.5 billion spent on Dubai’s Burj Khalifa was wrong, although she failed to confirm the game’s exact budget. This rumor appears to have emerged from a July 2025 article by Gulf News, which claimed “Dubai's landmark is said to have cost $1.5 billion but the game is thought to have a $2 billion budget.”
Earlier this year, Business Insider suggested a $1-1.5 billion budget based on industry analyst estimations as part of an interview with Strauss Zelnick, boss of Rockstar parent company Take-Two. Zelnick wouldn’t say how much the company had spent on GTA 6 so far, but did admit “it was expensive.”
While GTA 6 did not cost more than $1.5 billion to develop, according to Rockstar, it is considered the most expensive video game of all time. The only video game that might claim to come close to GTA 6’s budget is space sim Star Citizen, although its now over $1 billion budget comes from ongoing sales of space ships. Bungie's recently released extraction shooter reportedly had a budget of over $250 million, for example. Concord's initial development deal was around $200 million, according to a report by Kotaku. In 2023, documents submitted as part of the Xbox Federal Trade Commission case accidentally revealed The Last of Us: Part II and Horizon Forbidden West each cost more than $200 million to develop. Last year, the astronomical development budgets of the Call of Duty games were revealed for the first time after a court document confirmed Activision pumped $700 million into Black Ops Cold War alone, although that was over the shooter's life cycle. GTA 6, clearly, surpasses them all.
As part of Bloomberg’s report is the confirmation that Rockstar now has 4,711 staff across 12 offices, up from the 2,441 staff it had when Red Dead Redemption 2 came out in 2018. The company has doubled in size over the last eight years, which will have increased costs significantly.
As Bloomberg points out, GTA 6’s enormous budget is likely to pay off pretty quickly, with some predicting an eye-watering 40 million sales and $3 billion in revenue in the first four months of the game going on sale in November. The standard edition of GTA 6 costs $80 — a $10 hike on the standard price of a triple-A video game. The Ultimate Edition, which some consider to be an essential purchase, costs $100. Then there’s the expected launch of online multiplayer next year (maybe tied to the launch of the PC version, which is reportedly due out Q1 2027), which will surely boost revenue even further. In short, even if it’s just shy of $1.5 billion, GTA 6’s budget doesn’t feel like much of a risk.
In July, Newzoo analysis suggested GTA 6 generated approximately $180 million in digital preorders across the U.S. and the five biggest European markets during the last week of June (GTA 6 preorders went live at midnight, June 25). The analytics firm used GTA 5’s player distribution (around 69% of GTA 5's lifetime console players sit within those six markets) to then estimate global first-week preorder spending for GTA 6 at approximately $260 million. Based on comparable preorder curves, GTA 6 is currently tracking toward $3.25 billion to $5.2 billion in cumulative sales by the end of launch week, it said.
GTA 5 set records for generating $1 billion in three days after going on sale back in 2013, making it the fastest-selling entertainment product in history (Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Endgame ran it close, making $1 billion at the global box office in five days). GTA 6 seems certain to hit the $1 billion mark faster than both. GTA 5 went on to become the second best-selling video game of all time, with nearly 230 million units sold-in to date. Only Minecraft is ahead of it. Could GTA 6 eventually surpass even Minecraft's 400 million sales?
In other GTA 6 news, Bloomberg reported that Rockstar has promised its next game won’t take another eight years to develop, although we don’t know what it will be.