GTA 6 Has Been in the Oven for Eight Years, Former Dev Confirms
In news that should surprise absolutely no one with a calendar, it turns out Grand Theft Auto 6 has been in the works for a goddamn eternity. While we’ve all been speculating, a former Rockstar environmental artist named David O'Reilly just went ahead and seemingly confirmed the timeline during an interview. He casually mentioned his work on the project started way back in 2018, which means by the time this behemoth finally lands in May 2026, it will have been in active development for a full eight years.
An Eight-Year Prison Sentence
The beans were spilled during an interview on the Kiwi Talkz YouTube channel, where O'Reilly detailed his career path. He stated he rolled directly onto GTA 6 after wrapping up on Red Dead Redemption 2 in 2018 and stayed on the project for five years until his departure in 2023. This is the first real, sourced confirmation we have that full-scale production began that long ago, moving the timeline out of the realm of rumor and into stark reality.
Let’s do the math: an eight-year active development cycle. That’s an entire console generation. This doesn’t even count the years of pre-production that were likely humming along before that. It officially makes GTA 6 the longest, most resource-intensive project in Rockstar's history, and frankly, that’s saying something.
The Gilded Cage of 'Quality'
This whole situation begs the question: is this sustainable, or has Rockstar built itself a gilded cage? For any other company on planet Earth, spending eight years and god knows how many billions of dollars on a single product would be a one-way ticket to bankruptcy court. But Rockstar isn't any other company. They’re sitting on a mountain of cash built from a decade of printing GTA Online Shark Cards, which has effectively given them a blank check to pursue their own insane, perfectionist vision. They exist in a bubble, completely disconnected from the financial realities that govern the rest of the industry.
And I have to be honest, I'm conflicted about it. On one hand, you have to respect the absolute commitment to quality over quantity. They aren't churning out yearly, copy-pasted slop like some other studios we could name. But on the other hand, I miss the old Rockstar. I miss the era when they were prolific enough to give us a Bully, or a Midnight Club, or The Warriors in between their generation-defining epics. This new "one game per decade" model, where the entire global company becomes a monolithic production line for a single title, feels both incredibly ambitious and tragically restrictive.
The pressure is now astronomical. After an eight-year wait, "good" simply won't cut it. "Great" might not even be enough. This thing has to be a transcendent, industry-shattering masterpiece, otherwise this entire development model just looks like a colossal, self-indulgent folly. No pressure, guys.