The headcount at Rockstar Games has roughly doubled since Red Dead Redemption 2 shipped. That’s the figure worth pausing on. In 2018 the studio employed somewhere near 2,000 people. Today it sits at roughly 4,000, and Grand Theft Auto 6 is why.
The disclosure surfaced in a cover story for Dazed, in which Rockstar spoke candidly about the game’s development. The standout revelation: a fresh Los Angeles office devoted “almost solely” to one thing — the game’s NPCs. A whole building. Dedicated to the people you brush past on the street.
Some of that expansion came via acquisitions, adding studios in Australia and India alongside the LA office noted above.
The stylist who joined in 2023 and stayed
Not every new hire is a game developer. Jillian Carr, a stylist based in Miami, joined to help construct what Rockstar describes as a “fashion ecosystem” — one able to reflect the range of style, culture and class that gives Vice City's population its individual character.
“Vice City is built around vanity,” Carr told the magazine. “Between social media, celebrity culture and a constant flow of tourists, appearances carry significant weight, and trend cycles turn over quickly.”
Consultants working on a major game are hardly a novelty. The unusual part is the setup. Carr and colleagues in similar roles are full-time Rockstar staff, and have been for years. She came on in 2023 and looks to be woven into the team’s day-to-day work like anybody else.
Racecar drivers and 50 muralists
The recruitment drive didn’t stop there. Rockstar enlisted racecar drivers to sharpen vehicle handling, plus 50 genuine street artists to create murals scattered across the game’s map.
Fifty of them. Not a few commissioned pieces to decorate a handful of walls, but an entire roster of practising artists laying paint across a fictional Florida.
What else Rockstar revealed
The studio additionally shared new gameplay details, covering how eating, exercising and sleeping each influence your characters, along with plenty more besides.
And this is merely the first shot. Rockstar lifts the curtain properly tomorrow with an extended look on Netflix, which many expect to deliver a thorough gameplay breakdown.
In the meantime, here’s something to sit with: somewhere in Los Angeles sits an office of people employed full-time to ensure the stranger on the corner looks like they’ve got somewhere to be.