Why the rumored $2 billion GTA 6 budget is quite unlikely to be real

If you’re excited about GTA 6 and believe anyone who claims to have inside information, you’ve probably already fallen for the $2 billion budget rumor—an unconfirmed claim that’s been around for a while.

Since 2022, one of the many leaks surrounding GTA 6 has been the widespread but unverified claim that its development costs are close to $2 billion. There are several reasons to doubt this, aside from the obvious fact that neither Rockstar nor Take-Two has ever disclosed GTA 6’s budget. The game is still in development, and the final cost will only be known when it’s finished. But here are a few more reasons why the idea of GTA 6 costing $2 billion doesn’t add up.

Other Rockstar games never came close to even $1 billion

Adjusting for inflation in 2024, GTA V had an estimated total cost of around $333 million—$137 million for development and the rest for marketing, according to specialist estimates.

Scaling that up nearly seven times would be a massive jump, even after GTA 6’s nine years of development. While costs have risen over time, Rockstar didn’t start developing GTA 6 in 2025—earlier years of development would have been much cheaper, making such an extreme budget increase unlikely.

Red Dead Redemption 2 had over 2,000 people working on it for seven years before it was released in late 2018, and its estimated budget was around $540 million in very pessimistic projections. Still, just over half of a billion dollars and really far from two billion.

The most expensive live service games haven’t hit $1 billion in development

Genshin Impact, developed by miHoYo, has been in continuous development since 2020 and could be one of the most expensive games ever made, with a total estimated cost of over $900 million. But that includes both the initial development and five years of live service updates. Even with all that, it’s still nowhere near the rumored $2 billion for GTA 6.

For comparison, another extremely expensive game was Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, which cost around $700 million to develop—equivalent to $850 million by 2024 standards. Activision, a company bigger than Rockstar, still didn’t come close to a $1 billion total budget.

Even if GTA 6’s total budget was $2 billion, most of it would be marketing, not development

A huge portion of a game’s budget comes from marketing, and Rockstar hasn’t even begun its full marketing push for GTA 6. For example, GTA V had an estimated marketing budget of $265 million. If Rockstar decides to spend $1 billion on marketing for GTA 6, which is possible, it still wouldn’t mean the development cost itself is $2 billion.

Marketing budgets are unpredictable and can be as large as a company wants them to be, but that money doesn’t go into making the game better.

Even if Rockstar were to spend close to $1 billion on marketing, it’s still highly unlikely that the game’s actual development costs would add up to another $2 billion. A more reasonable estimate is that GTA 6’s total budget, including marketing, could approach $1 billion, but not that the game alone costs $2 billion to make.

The bottom line: The $2 billion GTA 6 budget claim has no proof

While it’s possible that, over time, GTA 6 could cost Rockstar $2 billion in total if you include marketing, post-launch support, and GTA Online updates, there is no proof that its development alone has a $2 billion budget. There’s no confirmation that Rockstar has set aside that amount or that it will ever spend that much in total.

Instead of focusing on wild budget rumors, it makes more sense to watch out for Take-Two’s upcoming earnings reports and manage your expectations for GTA 6 when it launches in Fall 2025.