Ex-GTA dev predicts GTA 6 will remain the “most expensive game ever” as artists will be “taken over by AI” for GTA 7

Grand Theft Auto 6 is set to be the biggest game of all time. Projections believe it will be the biggest ever launch in entertainment history, accumulating over $1 billion in just pre-orders alone. While $1 billion in just pre-orders sounds insane, what’s just as mind-blowing is that it would only break even for Rockstar because of the game’s record-breaking budget. In light of its budget, a former Rockstar developer expects GTA 6 to remain the “most expensive game ever” made because artists will largely be “taken over by AI” for GTA 7.

Ex-GTA dev predicts GTA 6 will remain “most expensive game ever” thanks to AI

The specific budget for GTA 6 hasn’t been shared, however, Take-Two Interactive has confirmed that its budget has exceeded $1 billion over five-years of development. It’s not the rumored $2 billion, but it’s still a lot of money. This positions GTA 6 as the “most expensive game ever,” and, as a point of comparison, it’s more than double the reported budget of $265 million for GTA 5.

Former Rockstar developer, Obbe Vermeij, recently conducted an interview with YouTuber, Kiwi Talkz, as relayed by Gamesradar. Vermeij was a technical director for the Grand Theft Auto series from GTA III to GTA IV.

The interview is just under an hour, and it’s worth listening to as there’s a lot of interesting discussions about the work culture at Rockstar as well as how game development has progressed. During the interview, the topic of AI was briefly brought up.

Vermeij said, “my prediction is GTA 6 is the most expensive game ever, and it will remain that way”. As for why Vermeij believes this, it’s “because a lot of that stuff is going to be taken over by AI whether we want it or not”.

Elaborating, Vermeij explained, “I think these banks of artists that are just building like massive maps or massive cutscenes, I think some of that will be taken over by AI in the next five years or so”.

Again elaborating why he thinks “GTA 7 will be cheaper to make than GTA 6,” Vermeij explained that, in the example of a cut-scene, “all the characters in the cut-scene could just be rendered by an AI including the conversation”. The former GTA technical director added, “You’ll still have artists to do the higher level creative stuff and there will be glitches to fix and all that stuff, but I think the bulk of the work is probably going to be replaced”.

While this is Vermeij’s prediction, he doesn’t expect GTA 7 for at least “15 years,” and there’s no telling what the gaming landscape will look like come 2041.

Take-Two has previously discussed the implementation of AI. Back in 2024, CEO, Strauss Zelnick, talked about generative AI and it how it could “allow us to do a bunch of things more efficiently”. However, at the same time, Zelnick said, “I don’t think for a minute that generative AI is going to reduce employment. That’s crazy. It’s not going to make people irrelevant. It’s going to change the nature of certain forms of employment. And that’s a good thing.”

AI is continually becoming a bigger focal point concerning the future of gaming. Microsoft just laid off 9,000 employees, and there’s a real concern that the publisher is turning their attention to AI to help with games development. It’s scary to think about how the gaming industry will look in five years, let alone 15 and whenever GTA 7 potentially happens.

In other Grand Theft Auto news, GTA 6 might be able to release in banned regions “without push back” as GTA 5 has finally been approved after 12 years.

Grand Theft Auto 6

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  Platform(s):
  PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series S/X, Xbox Series X
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  Genre(s):
  Action, Action Adventure