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Details on just how much Rockstar Games have spent on GTA 6 so far have arisen. Whilst these are estimates, it is based on actual financial data Rockstar Games have published themselves along with some educated guess work for additional office costs.
YouTuber Saukko505 delved deep into many of Rockstar’s documents to see just how much they have paid so far for GTA VI. For years now, there has been a fairly baseless rumour that the game has a budget of $2 billion. This is far bigger than any piece of entertainment before. GTA V for example had a budget of $250m meanwhile Call of Duty: Black Old Cold War cost $700m. However, the number that Saukko has worked out is actually even more than that $2b number so many people quote.
All of this information is public as that is how limited companies work in the UK. Head count, salaries, pensions, assets and more are all displayed for everyone to see and that includes Rockstar Games. Even though the HQ is Rockstar New York and they are owned by the American company Take-Two Interactive, Rockstar still does a lot of business from the UK and was originally DMA Design out of Scotland.
Explaining Rockstar’s Business
The UK business for Rockstar is titled Rockstar Games UK Limited. This is the entity that was formerly DMA Design all the way back in the day before Take-Two Interactive bought for several million dollars in 1999.
Rockstar Games UK Limited encompasses all of the company’s UK offices; not just Rockstar North which is the main GTA 6 studio. Rockstar has several UK offices: International (based in London), North (based in Edinburgh), Dundee, London, Leeds and Lincoln. This limited company has combined each of these offices since 2018. This was when Red Dead Redemption 2 was finishing development and GTA VI was in an extremely early stage.
Given that all of the UK offices have been combined under one limited company since GTA VI actually begun development, that means the documents will display a fair image of the resource cost. For example, as of 2025, Rockstar employed 1744 people.
Now here’s where things get interesting. In 2019, Saukko noticed Rockstar paid a little over £90m in wages to all of its UK staff. Then in 2020 they “restated” them as over £200 for 2019. The content creator theorises the entire company’s worldwide salaries are combined into the UK business now.
Now with the knowledge of GTA VI not really getting truly underway until 2019/2020 and estimates that get us to November 19th 2026, Rockstar will have spent nearly £2.7 billion on wages and overhead costs. Adding other costs office leases, office equipment and more, the combined total in dollars is around $3 billion. Also, this does not include inflation, music licensing, marketing etc.
Extra Notes
It is worth nothing this accounts for all of the staff on payroll. Since 2019, Rockstar Games have been hard at work on a number of projects not just GTA VI. For example, GTA Online has received significant content drops multiple times every single year.
Red Dead Online also has had support. They put out new versions of GTA V for current gen consoles and PC among other things. Some projects will have been worked on that we do not even know about. Things like customer service also encapsulates everything Rockstar does.
Also, the company has saved tens of millions in tax relief in places like the UK. Recently, we looked at politicians who had been looking into how Rockstar has taken large sums of money from the UK taxpayers after huge profits despite not releasing an actual new game since 2018. You can learn more about that story here.
In conclusion, the true budget can’t be easily worked out. That said, just on paying staff alone, the game is costing billions to make. It will make that back in a matter of days though in November. For more info, be sure to check out Saukko’s video.
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