I love how the actual evidence for shitting on
Kirun
about the budget is not actual financial documents but the analysis and integrity of a hacker saying the budget is $2 billion dollars -- which even then doesn't mean that 2 billion has been spent or will be spent and includes no timeframe or breakdown.
Well, in previous posts I mentioned it came from the data leak. Later folks analyzed the dollars budgeted (Assuming it was high level) and saw that it correlated across the entire project scope from where it was initially thought to be development for just the launch. Which the hacker later admitted was read wrong. So it's been toned down to $2 billion total project scope budget for the entire life of GTA 6. So that will include Pre-Production, Ramp, Development, Mainlining, Launch, Marketing, licensing, localization, etc. From there Development/launch of the online component in conjunction with PC (usually 3rd party). Then seasonal content and live teams for the GaaS component, development teams for both seasonal and DLC, and then all the buckets of costs listed in launch all over again - on what was initially from 2014 to 2025; an 11 year launch cycle combined with massive inflation we have seen and a rather unique labor market currently. Over a 10 year budget lifecycle that really isn't too hard to imagine. Meaning this budget spans 21 years.
On the flip side, it was a slack hack, however be it able to access source code. So since he accessed source code, accessing budgetary data for a game being developed (Along with all the clips we saw) is easily done. But I do say slack hack because he could have just seen some low level designer talk about budget in a space message, an IM, or high level executive chatter. From what he pulled was a graphical. Maybe a combination of the two.
Either way, no one should be shocked that with economic factors, labor factors, and inflation and GaaS mainstream that projects have much longer budgets planned. Couple the fact that $265 million is $340 million today in just a short ten years, it makes sense depending on the output which we haven't seen yet.
And that key critical component - this is (More than likely but speculation at this point) a 21 year budget.