Former GTA 6 artist says Rockstar avoids the layoff cycles common at Sony and Microsoft

A former Rockstar environment artist who worked on GTA 6, Red Dead Redemption 2, and GTA 5 has offered a blunt assessment of why the studio operates at a different level. David O'Reilly, whose credits span 12 years at the company, says Rockstar has avoided the fire-and-rehire cycle that has become common across the games industry.

According to O'Reilly, major publishers like Sony and Microsoft have spent recent years cutting staff to reduce costs, only to scale back up when production demands it. That churn, he argues, erodes the accumulated knowledge that allows teams to build on past successes. By contrast, he says Rockstar has kept nearly all of its institutional knowledge, and he worked alongside people who had been at Rockstar North since it was still called DMA Design, a name it shed in early 2002.

That continuity creates what O'Reilly describes as a knowledge bank that is invaluable for game development. He contends that Sony and Microsoft do not truly care about making game products because they are focused on the money. Even Take-Two Interactive, Rockstar's publisher, shares that financial focus, he says, but the company treats Rockstar as a golden goose and remains hands-off, terrified of breaking a winning formula.

O'Reilly's broader point about staff retention is finding support elsewhere. Nintendo's Eiji Aonuma recently noted that the Ocarina of Time remake benefited from the company's practice of avoiding mass layoffs. Still, O'Reilly's claim that no one is competing with Rockstar is not without caveats. Other studios retain talent and produce acclaimed games, and Rockstar's resources, fueled by billions in GTA 5 revenue, are unmatched in the industry.