New GTA 6 screenshots: Rockstar shares two images in Bloomberg's look inside the studio

Rockstar Games shared two new images of Grand Theft Auto VI on Oct. 14, in Bloomberg Businessweek's cover story on the making of the game. One shows Jason and Lucia caked in mud at an off-road spot, drinks in hand. The other shows a green supercar on a neon-lit street as a helicopter's searchlight cuts through the haze.

Neither image is on Rockstar's own site yet. Both run with the feature, by Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, who spent a day interviewing Rockstar's top staff at its Edinburgh office in late September. Bloomberg says it's the first time Rockstar has talked openly about the development challenges behind the game.

Jason and Lucia in the mud

Jason and Lucia lean against a red pickup, both spattered head to toe in mud and dressed in camouflage. He holds a beer and wears a backwards cap and a tank top that reads "Show me your mudflaps"; she has a can and yellow sunglasses. Lifted trucks sit on the churned-up dirt behind them.

The pickup's badge reads L35 above Walton, so we've added the Walton L35 to our vehicles database. As with every name we take from Rockstar's images, that's what the badge says; Rockstar hasn't described the truck.

A supercar under the spotlight

The second image is a tall shot of a low green supercar on a wet street at night, with pink neon on the Art Deco buildings behind it and a helicopter shining its searchlight overhead. It carries a Leonida license plate. Lettering above its right taillight starts G-R-A-N-F-O before the image cuts it off, so the car's full name isn't readable, and we haven't added it to the database.

What Rockstar told Bloomberg

The images illustrate a long look at how GTA 6 was made. Among the details from Rockstar's leaders:

• It took more than eight years. Development lead Rob Nelson and others made their first research trip to Miami in 2015. The game was code-named "Project Americas" because it aimed to cover big swaths of North and South America, before being cut down to Miami and its surroundings.
• Both delays went through Jennifer Kolbe, Rockstar's head of publishing, who called Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick each time. Of the second, to Nov. 19, she recalls him saying, "You're kidding. Please tell me you're kidding."
• The cost stays secret. Rockstar won't say what the game cost, but Kolbe shot down the rumor that it topped the $1.5 billion Dubai's Burj Khalifa took to build.
• Rockstar nearly doubled in size, from 2,441 employees when Red Dead Redemption 2 came out in 2018 to 4,711 across 12 offices. When the team realized it couldn't produce all the non-player characters it needed, Rockstar quickly built a Los Angeles studio of writers, producers and directors just to make them.
• On overtime, Kolbe says she told staff, "We're not going to finish this game by crunching," and calls the result "certainly better than Red Dead II was."
• A test session went off the rails. Head of development Phil Hooker meant to check a story mission, then spent two hours on a fender-bender, a store robbery, a car theft and a fence. "I remember the sheer fun of it," he says.

Bloomberg also reports that an online component is expected in 2027. Rockstar's developers weren't discussing it, and Rockstar hasn't announced one; our online guide has what's confirmed.

GTA 6 launches Nov. 19 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. Every official image, these two included, is on our screenshots page.