Who Made GTA 6? Rob Nelson, Aaron Garbut, Phil Hooker and the Rockstar Team

Ask who made GTA 6 and most people will name one person. There isn't one. Grand Theft Auto VI, out November 19, 2026 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, is led by three heads of development at Rockstar North in Edinburgh, Rob Nelson, Aaron Garbut and Phil Hooker, overseen by Rockstar president and co-founder Sam Houser, and built by a company that has grown to more than 4,700 people across a dozen offices. Here is who does what, based only on what Rockstar and its leads have said on the record.

The essentials

• Developer: Rockstar Games, with Rockstar North (Edinburgh) as lead studio and the other Rockstar offices working on the game alongside it.
• Publisher: Rockstar Games, a label of Take-Two Interactive.
• The three heads of development: Rob Nelson, Aaron Garbut and Phil Hooker, named as co-leads in Bloomberg's October 2026 feature on the game.
• Overall creative oversight: Sam Houser, Rockstar co-founder and president, according to Rob Nelson's comments to Edge.
• Publishing: Jennifer Kolbe, Rockstar's head of publishing.
• Not involved: Dan Houser, co-founder and the series' longtime lead writer, left Rockstar in 2020 and has said he did not write any of GTA 6.
• Team size: 4,711 staff in August 2026, up from 2,441 at the launch of Red Dead Redemption 2 in 2018 (Bloomberg).

Rockstar North: the lead studio

Grand Theft Auto has been made in Scotland since the first game in 1997, when the studio was still called DMA Design. Renamed Rockstar North, it led GTA III, Vice City, San Andreas, GTA IV and GTA V, and it leads GTA 6. That is where Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier spent a day for his feature, and where Edge watched a 90-minute demo for its cover story (see our breakdown of the Edge preview).

"Lead studio" does not mean "only studio". Bloomberg counts 12 Rockstar offices in total, and modern Rockstar games are produced as one company-wide project rather than by a single team. The clearest example for GTA 6 is a Los Angeles unit of writers, directors and producers that works only on the non-player characters, set up once the team realized how many NPCs needed writing and animating. We cover what that group has produced in our article on NPC memory and the food system.

Rob Nelson: co-studio head and the public face of the demo

If you have read a GTA 6 interview in 2026, it was probably Rob Nelson talking. He is co-studio head of Rockstar North and one of the three heads of development. Public profiles say he joined Rockstar around 2003 as an animator at Rockstar Toronto before moving up to lead roles.

What he has said on the record about GTA 6:

• He plays the demos. Nelson drove the build himself for Bloomberg and for Edge, controller in hand, as Jason calling Lucia, rather than running a scripted presentation.
• Playtime: he told The New York Times in August 2026 that his own playthrough, finished in February, took about 80 hours, story plus optional goals tied to it.
• Two protagonists: he has explained that the team chose two characters in a relationship rather than three separate leads, to avoid diluting the player's time with each.
• Relationship system: he told The New York Times it is "new for GTA, this idea of your actions having meaning in terms of how you treat your partner or how violent you are."

Bloomberg also gives him a central part in the game's history. Nelson led the first research trip to Miami in 2015, and when Red Dead Redemption 2 grew, he moved most of the company onto it, which pushed GTA 6 back by several years. He described the post-pandemic stretch as "a dark period". The full chronology is in our GTA 6 development timeline.

Aaron Garbut: the art of Vice City and Leonida

Aaron Garbut is the other co-studio head of Rockstar North and one of the longest-serving people on the series. He has led the look of the GTA games for most of the 3D and HD eras, which is why his name keeps coming up whenever the discussion turns to how Leonida looks.

On GTA 6 he has spoken about:

• Map size: he described the map to Bloomberg as roughly twice the size of GTA 5's.
• Detail: in autumn press coverage he said every room is considered individually, down to "who's sitting where, what they're drinking, the marks that are left on the table." That quote is the basis of our article on enterable buildings and interiors.
• NPCs: the team says every NPC was art-directed individually, and the game uses more than 600,000 animations, against about 55,000 in GTA 5 and around 300,000 in Red Dead Redemption 2.
• The 2022 leak: he told Bloomberg the September 2022 hack, which put unfinished clips online, felt deeply invasive. 6cheats does not cover the leaked material.

Phil Hooker: technology and the engine

Phil Hooker is the most technical of the three. Sources give him different titles, from director of technology to head of development, and he appears among the heads of development in GTA V's credits. For GTA 6 his remit is the engine and tools that let a world this size run on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.

His main public statements, both from Bloomberg:

• The original schedule was achievable, but "not for the game the team wanted to make", the closest thing to an official explanation of the delays from 2025 to May 2026, then to November 19, 2026.
• The engine, tools and team built for GTA 6 should speed up future projects. The leads go further: the next Rockstar game will not take eight years.

Next to him, Bloomberg names Jonathon Ashcroft, senior vice president for technology, among the people present at Rockstar North.

Sam Houser: the president who still reviews the game

Sam Houser co-founded Rockstar Games in 1998 and is its president. He gives almost no interviews: in October 2026 he pulled out of a rare interview with GQ that had been in the works for four years, citing personal reasons.

So what we know of his role comes from others. In early November, reporting on Rob Nelson's Edge interview said Houser has been involved since the game's first conception and still shapes its general direction. After each development milestone, Nelson spends about two weeks with him going through feedback, down to lighting and audio. Put plainly: the three heads of development run the production, and Sam Houser remains the final creative reviewer.

Dan Houser: the co-founder who did not write it

Dan Houser co-wrote and produced every GTA up to GTA V, plus both Red Dead Redemption games. He left Rockstar in 2020 and founded Absurd Ventures, which is working on its own projects. In interviews he has said he did not write any of GTA 6, adding: "The world's probably had enough GTA from me." He has also said he deliberately avoids watching the gameplay.

That matters for fans who expect a Dan Houser tone. Rockstar has not publicly named the writers of the GTA 6 story, so any list of writers circulating online is unconfirmed. Bloomberg only says the skeleton of the story existed by the end of 2019.

Jennifer Kolbe and Take-Two: the business side

Jennifer Kolbe is Rockstar's head of publishing, the person who handles the release date. Bloomberg reports that she called Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick twice to announce a delay, first to May 2026, then to November. His reaction to the second call, as she recalls it: "You're kidding. Please tell me you're kidding."

She also rejected the rumor that the game cost more than $1.5 billion, without giving the real figure. Bloomberg calls it almost certainly the most expensive game ever made. Take-Two, Rockstar's parent company since its acquisition in the late 1990s, publishes the game and reports its sales; Zelnick speaks for the business, not the creative direction.

The people you hear: the cast

Behind the developers are the actors who give the characters their voices and their performance capture. Rockstar has not published a cast list ahead of launch. For what is actually confirmed about the two leads, see who voices Jason and Lucia. Full credits will settle the question when the game is out.

Crunch, unions and the people behind the credits

"Who made GTA 6" is also a question about working conditions. After the 60-hour weeks reported on Red Dead Redemption 2, leadership promised the next GTA would not be built through crunch. Kolbe says Rockstar hired more staff, set more realistic schedules and offered paid time off, sometimes extra pay, for extra hours. She also admits it was not perfect and that some employees will say they crunched anyway.

Other episodes: a return to the office five days a week in 2024, and in 2025 the dismissal of 34 people, most of them part of a group that was unionizing, a case before a Glasgow employment tribunal. A union vote at Rockstar runs from November 12 to 26, right through the launch (details in our article on the Rockstar union vote).

What we still do not know

• Full credits: they will only be readable in-game after November 19. Expect thousands of names across every Rockstar office.
• Writers and lead designers: Rockstar has not named them publicly.
• Exact budget: not disclosed, beyond Kolbe's denial of the $1.5 billion rumor.

Until then, the short answer holds: GTA 6 is made by Rockstar Games, led from Edinburgh by Rob Nelson, Aaron Garbut and Phil Hooker, under the eye of Sam Houser.

Sources

• Bloomberg Businessweek, Jason Schreier, feature on the making of GTA 6, October 14, 2026 (via GTA Intel and VGTimes)
• Edge, issue 430 cover feature, October 2026, and Rob Nelson's comments on Sam Houser (via GamesRadar and GamingBolt, November 3, 2026)
• The New York Times, interview with Rob Nelson, August 2026
• PC Gamer and GamesRadar, interviews with Dan Houser on his departure and GTA 6
• Rockstar Intel, on Sam Houser's cancelled GQ interview, October 2026