By Ray Ampoloquio · Aug 30, 2026 Updated by Matt Gibbs · Aug 31, 2026 An IO Interactive AI programmer says Grand Theft Auto VI crowds run real NPC AI, not looped animations, calling it years ahead of the industry.

Zoom image: IO Interactive AI programmer Berkay Dursun says Grand Theft Auto VI simulates every NPC individually, and Rockstar's own numbers back the scale Someone on X tried to dunk on Grand Theft Auto VI 's crowds by comparing them to Hitman 's and it didn't go how they hoped. Berkay Dursun, an AI programmer at IO Interactive who spent three years building the crowd tech behind 007: First Light , stepped in and didn't agree with the comparison.

Dursun said, in his words (originally posted in Turkish), that Rockstar Games ' technology in its upcoming game is "at least 10 years ahead of the industry."

According to him, most games fake their crowds, Hitman and Assassin's Creed included. He describes the crowds used in these games as having no AI, no schedules, no brains, just canned animations looping to make a place look alive and busy, whereas a real NPC has an actual AI running it, reacting to you, and living its own life.

He says that this is what Rockstar does, individually, at a scale nobody else is even close to, and he says the closest comparison is Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord . But even then, GTA 6 is just on a whole other level.

Of course, Dursun made it clear that he doesn't work at Rockstar. However, his words hold weight because he builds crowd systems for a living and he's making it as if Rockstar's work is witchcraft or magic.

Rockstar itself has also backed up the sheer scale he's describing. Speaking to the New York Times around the premiere of Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look , Rockstar said that GTA 6 will have more than 600,000 unique NPC animations, which over ten times what Grand Theft Auto V had and double Red Dead Redemption 2 .

Numbers only tell you so much, though. What sells it is the intent behind them. Rockstar North co-studio head Aaron Garbut described NPCs that materially exist in the world, down to who is sitting where in a random room, what they are drinking, and the marks left on the table.

There is a whole team in Los Angeles whose entire job is art-directing individual pedestrians, a genuinely unhinged use of unlimited resources. The results are exactly what you were staring at for most of the 26-minute Netflix footage: the packed clubs and dense beaches , the pedestrians who actually react when you draw a weapon or start a scene.

This is also likely part of why the game runs at 30 FPS on consoles and why we argued that cap is the compromise Rockstar may have to pay.

All those individually simulated brains cost something. The crowd you cannot stop staring at is the same crowd eating the frame rate.

So what does it mean for Leonida ? If Dursun is even half right, the city is not a backdrop with extras shuffling through it. It is a place where the person you just carjacked has somewhere to go, an opinion about you doing it, and a deep enough animation set that you might not see the same reaction twice your entire playthrough.

Whether that holds up is the one thing nobody can promise until launch, but if the goal was a world that feels alive rather than merely populated , the tech, on paper and on screen, is pointing the right way.

Ray Ampoloquio Editor and News Writer, GTA BOOM

Ray is a GTA BOOM editor and news writer covering GTA 6, Rockstar and Take-Two, GTA Online and franchise history using primary-source reporting.