Grand Theft Auto VI is the next mainline entry in Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto series, launching November 19, 2026 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox...
Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA 6)
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Rockstar Games is the New York studio behind Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, Max Payne 3, and Bully, and it has shaped what open world games look like for more than 20 years. Sam Houser, Dan Houser, Terry Donovan, Jamie King, and Gary Foreman founded Rockstar in 1998 under Take-Two Interactive, and the label grew from a small publishing outfit into a network of studios spread across the UK, the US, Canada, India, and Australia.
What makes Rockstar strange compared to almost every other big studio is how rarely it releases anything new. Since Grand Theft Auto V launched in 2013, Rockstar has shipped exactly one brand new game, Red Dead Redemption 2, along with a pile of ports and over a decade of GTA Online updates. That patience has paid off. Take-Two reports Grand Theft Auto V at nearly 230 million units sold and Red Dead Redemption 2 at over 80 million, numbers that carry the whole publisher while everyone waits on Grand Theft Auto VI.
Sam and Dan Houser were British brothers working at BMG Interactive in London, the label that published the original Grand Theft Auto in 1997. When Take-Two Interactive bought BMG Interactive in 1998, the Housers moved to New York and set up Rockstar Games with Terry Donovan, Jamie King, and Gary Foreman. Sam ran the studio as president while Dan became its lead writer, and the brothers' love of crime films and British satire ended up baked into almost everything Rockstar made over the next two decades.
DMA Design started in Dundee, Scotland in 1988 under David Jones, and its biggest hit before GTA was Lemmings in 1991. The studio passed through Gremlin Interactive and then Infogrames before Take-Two bought it in 1999. DMA's core team relocated to Edinburgh and the studio took the Rockstar North name in 2002. Rockstar North has led development on every mainline Grand Theft Auto since GTA III, and it sits at the center of Grand Theft Auto VI.
Grand Theft Auto III hit PlayStation 2 in October 2001 and turned the top-down GTA games into a fully 3D Liberty City. Claude, the protagonist, never said a word, but the city wouldn't shut up, with talk radio and pedestrian chatter taking constant shots at American culture. That template, a mission-based crime story dropped into a satirical sandbox, became the Rockstar formula.
Vice City followed in 2002 with Tommy Vercetti and a neon-soaked 1980s take on Miami. San Andreas arrived in 2004 with Carl "CJ" Johnson and an entire state split across Los Santos, San Fierro, and Las Venturas. Rockstar Leeds took the series portable on PSP with Liberty City Stories in 2005 and Vice City Stories in 2006, then handled Chinatown Wars on Nintendo DS in 2009.
Grand Theft Auto IV in April 2008 was Rockstar getting serious. Niko Bellic's immigrant story was heavier than anything the series had done before, and the Euphoria physics gave every car crash and stumble real weight. The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony expanded Liberty City in 2009 as Episodes from Liberty City.
I remember playing GTA IV's multiplayer and the physics weren't anywhere near as good as the main game. While I was driving through Liberty City, the doors on my car would randomly fall off. It was a confusing bug, but a lot of fun regardless.
Grand Theft Auto V launched September 17, 2013 on PS3 and Xbox 360, letting the player swap between Michael De Santa, Franklin Clinton, and Trevor Philips at almost any moment. It has since been re-released on two more console generations plus PC, most recently on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S in March 2022. More than a decade later, GTA V still shows up among Take-Two's biggest earners every single quarter.
Max Payne started at Remedy Entertainment in Finland, with Rockstar handling console versions of the 2001 original and publishing Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne in 2003. Rockstar took the series in-house for Max Payne 3 in 2012, dragging Max to São Paulo with bullet time intact and a much bleaker tone. Remedy is back on the series now, remaking the first two games with Rockstar funding the project.
Manhunt in 2003 was Rockstar North's stealth horror game about James Earl Cash being forced to star in snuff films, and it was every bit as grim as that sounds. Manhunt 2 in 2007 got slapped with an Adults Only rating from the ESRB and was refused classification by the BBFC in the UK before Rockstar trimmed it down.
Rockstar Toronto adapted Walter Hill's 1979 cult film into The Warriors in 2005, a beat 'em up that still holds up better than it has any right to. Rockstar Vancouver followed with Bully in 2006, known as Canis Canem Edit in Europe, putting Jimmy Hopkins in Bullworth Academy for a schoolyard version of the GTA formula. Bully 2 has never been announced, no matter how many times fans ask.
The Midnight Club street racing series ran from the PS2 launch in 2000 through Midnight Club: Los Angeles in 2008. Rockstar Table Tennis in 2006 looks like a footnote, but it was the first game on the Rockstar Advanced Game Engine, better known as RAGE, which went on to power GTA IV, GTA V, and Red Dead Redemption 2. L.A. Noire in 2011 was developed by Team Bondi and published by Rockstar, with Cole Phelps interrogating suspects through MotionScan facial capture. Team Bondi closed shortly after release amid reports of brutal working conditions.
Rockstar San Diego began as Angel Studios, which Take-Two bought in 2002. Red Dead Revolver started life as a Capcom project at Angel Studios before Rockstar picked it up and released it in 2004. That rough western laid the groundwork for Red Dead Redemption in May 2010, the story of John Marston hunting down his old gang members for the government. The Undead Nightmare expansion dropped a zombie outbreak into the same frontier later that year.
Red Dead Redemption 2 launched October 26, 2018 as a prequel set in 1899, following Arthur Morgan and the Van der Linde gang as their way of life collapses around them. Rockstar built it with nearly every one of its studios working as a single team. Take-Two now puts it at over 80 million copies sold. The original Red Dead Redemption finally reached PS4 and Nintendo Switch in 2023 and PC in 2024.
Rockstar Games headquarters is in New York City, where publishing, marketing, and the Houser-era creative leadership have always been based. Rockstar North in Edinburgh leads Grand Theft Auto development. Rockstar San Diego handles core technology and has led Red Dead work since Revolver.
Rockstar Toronto, based in Oakville, Ontario, has handled PC ports and co-development since The Warriors. Rockstar Leeds built the handheld GTA games and now supports PC versions and online work. Rockstar London co-developed Manhunt 2 and contributes to the bigger releases, while Rockstar Lincoln is the company's main quality assurance and localization studio.
Rockstar New England in Andover, Massachusetts was originally Mad Doc Software and joined in 2008. Rockstar India in Bengaluru provides art and technical support. Rockstar Dundee, formerly Ruffian Games, joined in 2020 and brought the company back to the city where DMA Design started. Rockstar Australia, formerly Video Games Deluxe in Sydney, is the newest addition. Rockstar Vancouver merged into Rockstar Toronto in 2012, and Rockstar Vienna closed in 2006.
GTA Online launched October 1, 2013 and quietly became the most important thing Rockstar runs. Heists, businesses, and a steady stream of free updates kept players buying Shark Cards for over a decade, and the GTA+ subscription added monthly perks in 2022. Take-Two singled out the A Safehouse in the Hills update as one of the best-performing in GTA Online history.
Red Dead Online started as a beta in November 2018 and became a standalone release in 2020, but Rockstar wound down major updates in 2022 to put its people on GTA VI. Rockstar also bought Cfx.re, the team behind the FiveM and RedM roleplay platforms, in 2023, bringing the GTA RP scene that blew up on Twitch under its own roof.
The Hot Coffee scandal hit in 2005 when a PC mod unlocked a hidden sex minigame left in the code of GTA San Andreas. The ESRB re-rated the game Adults Only, retailers pulled it from shelves, and Take-Two settled with the FTC in 2006. Combined with Manhunt 2's rating fight, it made Rockstar the default target whenever politicians wanted to blame video games for something.
Crunch has been a harder story to shake. In a 2018 interview ahead of Red Dead Redemption 2, Dan Houser mentioned the team working 100-hour weeks, and the backlash forced Rockstar to clarify that he meant a small group of senior writers. In late 2025, Rockstar fired more than 30 staff in Canada and the UK, and the IWGB union accused the company of union busting while Rockstar said the firings were over leaked confidential information.
Dan Houser took an extended break in 2019 and officially left Rockstar Games in March 2020, ending a run as lead writer on every major GTA and Red Dead game. He went on to found Absurd Ventures, where he has been building original stories like A Better Paradise. Sam Houser remains at Rockstar. Leslie Benzies, longtime president of Rockstar North, had already left in 2016 and later founded Build A Rocket Boy, the studio behind MindsEye.
Rockstar confirmed Grand Theft Auto VI was in active development in February 2022, and a hacker leaked 90 clips of early footage that September. The first trailer arrived December 4, 2023, pushed out early after it leaked, introducing Lucia and Jason in the state of Leonida with Vice City back as the headline city. Trailer 2 followed on May 6, 2025 with full names for Lucia Caminos and Jason Duval.
The original 2025 window slipped to May 26, 2026, then slipped again to November 19, 2026 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. Take-Two has repeated the November 19 date in earnings calls and SEC filings all year, and no PC version has been announced. Based on Rockstar's history, a PC release will follow at some point, but until Rockstar says so it's just a safe guess.
Grand Theft Auto VI is the next mainline entry in Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto series, launching November 19, 2026 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox...