As our readers know, GTA 6 has been in the news a lot this past month. A leaker hacked into Rockstar Games and proceeded to drop a bunch of videos showing the current state of the title. This got a lot of people talking because not only did this fully confirm that the game was coming out, it proved that at the very least, Rockstar had been working on it for some time. Naturally, people wanted to learn more, and the hacker was willing to give them their wishes. Now, some DMs have been published that seem to indicate an astronomical budget for the title.
If the leaker can be believed, then GTA 6 has a budget of $2.5 billion. To say that’s a lot of money is an understatement. That’s a crap ton of money that most video game developers couldn’t even hope to try and come up with for a title, no matter how much hype may surround it. Now, we need to make it very clear that this is an unconfirmed report about how much the budget is. Furthermore, if this was the budget, it wouldn’t be for just the base game–rather, it would be for the entire video game process. That means the years of prep work for it, the development of the game itself, the online element that you know is going to happen, the DLC for both titles, and so on.
Marketing would also be a big aspect that could crank up the budget, as Hollywood has proven.
So, do we take this DM leak at its word? This time around, no, we don’t. What’s more, it’s for a very basic reason: history. Video games are indeed expensive to make. It’s also very true that over time, the cost of doing business has skyrocketed for AAA developers. They have to push their teams and their games to new heights to come out on top. That means a bigger budget.
However, there’s a difference between having a big budget and then having a $2.5 billion budget. For example, the current highest-budget video game ever is the infamous Star Citizen. This title has an alleged budget of $400 million, all for a game that has no clear release date as of yet. For something a bit more concrete, look at Cyberpunk 2077. When that game was finally released, it had a budget of $316 million.
So for GTA 6 to go to $2.5 wouldn’t just be insane, it’d be downright stupid. If Rockstar had the budget be $400 million, or $500 million? That would be possible and downright reasonable to an extent. But to be in the billion-dollar range is something that at this point is not feasible. Also, just to remind you, the hacker has been arrested, so their words now mean even less.
Source: Tweaktown
