The budget of GTA VI may reach 1.5 billion US dollars, and the number of animations will increase tenfold in exchange for blood and sweat.

"Grand Theft Auto V" used 55,000 sets of animations and has been regarded as one of the most meticulously crafted games in the 2010s. Rockstar North co-head Aaron Garbut told the New York Times that the number of animations for "Grand Theft Auto VI", which will be released in November 2026, will reach 600,000, which is about twice the number of the previous game "Red Dead Redemption 2". From 55,000 to 600,000, there was nearly ten years of development time and a budget that Rockstar has not officially announced yet.

Analysts estimate that this amount has exceeded US$1 billion, and some figures even see US$1.5 billion, making "GTA VI" regarded as the most expensive entertainment product in history, surpassing Hollywood blockbusters and other 3A games. For comparison, court documents in 2023 revealed that Sony Interactive Entertainment spent $212 million on "Horizon Forbidden West" and $220 million on "The Last of Us: Part II"; another court document revealed that Activision's development costs during the entire life cycle of "Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War" were more than $700 million, and this only included the total number of subsequent content updates, not the initial budget for the stand-alone version. "GTA VI" has already crossed this threshold based on conservative estimates, and there is a high probability that the online mode will not be launched simultaneously when the game is launched.

Extended from 2025 to 2026, the long working hours behind the animation team

"GTA VI" was originally scheduled to be released in 2025, but was first postponed to May 2026, and then postponed again to November 2026. Rockstar itself admitted that the development process was not going smoothly: some employees accused the company of long-term rush hours and late-night overtime work, and Rockstar was accused of firing several employees who participated in union organizing, which the company denied. This is not the first time Rockstar has encountered this kind of controversy - during the development of "Red Dead Redemption 2", there were reports of employees working 100 hours a week; before and after the release of "The Last of Us: Part II", there were also reports that Naughty Dog employees were required to work overtime. At that time, the outside world praised the game's exquisite and almost superfluous animation details, while questioning the human cost behind these details.

Another billion-dollar case that is often compared is Star Citizen. The game has been in development since 2011 and has accumulated more than $1 billion in revenue through crowdfunding and in-game spaceship sales. However, it has never reached a stage that can be called "completed", even though it is technically playable. Its stand-alone branch "Squadron 42" was originally scheduled to be launched in 2014, but is currently scheduled to be launched in 2027. In comparison, "GTA VI" has at least a release date of November 2026.

Whether the money is a good deal or not, the answer given by "Grand Theft Auto V" is very straightforward: it achieved sales of US$800 million on the day it was launched in 2013, and the cumulative total revenue is now around US$10 billion. Leaked revenue data shows that even though "GTA Online" has been online for more than ten years, Rockstar is still making millions of dollars every week from microtransactions and GTA+ subscriptions. This also explains why Rockstar and publisher Take-Two Interactive are willing to spend hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars on a single game - as long as the stand-alone version sells hundreds of millions of units and the online model lasts for another decade, this account still seems justified.