Rockstar founder’s absence is a series inflection point

As the hype and pressure continues to mount for Grand Theft Auto 6, recent comments by Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser have left fans wondering about the future direction for the cultural juggernaut series.

Speaking to IGN in at LA Comic Con, Houser dished on the projects he worked on during his lengthy tenure at Rockstar. Naturally, the subject of GTA 6 came up almost immediately.

“It’s not going to be a story that I wrote or a character set that I developed,” Houser said of the upcoming game. For some, Houser’s lack of involvement in GTA 6 might seem obvious. He left Rockstar in 2020 to found his own creative studio, Absurd Ventures, the scope of which spans well beyond video games. But GTA 6 technically began pre-production in 2018, right after Rockstar released Red Dead Redemption 2. Full-on development for GTA 6 began in 2020, the same year Houser departed.

Two years is enough overlap for a lead writer to make some kind of imprint on a project, even if it eventually shifts into a different direction. And Houser was a key player in building the GTA people know and love. He wrote much of the dialogue in the series, and was known for pushing back on publisher demands to hasten development to meet deadlines. Red Dead Redemption 2 came to life via Post-It notes in Houser’s office. With the help of two writing partners, Houser wrote hundreds of scenes in Red Dead Redemption 2 alone. The final script of that game is well over 2,000 pages if you include side-quests.

At the same time, Houser’s involvement with the series also coincides with Rockstar’s major crunch period, where developers could spend up to 100 hours a week building their popular open-world games. Since then, Rockstar has reportedly made a concentrated effort to improve the work culture at the company to lessen the need for long work hours, and to ensure games could stick to projected development timelines.

Image: Rockstar Games

Development-wise, GTA 6 is already in different territory than its predecessors. But the direction of the game itself is also a giant question mark. How do you follow up one of the most successful games of all time? Even before Houser left, this seemed to be a puzzle that was eating away at Rockstar. In 2018, Houser expressed gratitude that he believed GTA 6 wasn’t going to release during Trump’s presidency.

“It’s really unclear what we would even do with it, let alone how upset people would get with whatever we did … Both intense liberal progression and intense conservatism are both very militant, and very angry,” Houser told British GQ. “It is scary but it’s also strange, and yet both of them seem occasionally to veer towards the absurd. It’s hard to satirize for those reasons. Some of the stuff you see is straightforwardly beyond satire. It would be out of date within two minutes, everything is changing so fast.”

Years later, GTA 6 is, in fact, releasing during Donald Trump’s presidency. Every day brings about a word salad of headlines that, a decade ago, would have sounded like something that couldn’t possibly be true even in the wacky world of Grand Theft Auto. DOGE. Department of War. Autism and Tylenol. Presidential collectible cards. Oh, the president is yelling off the roof of the White House. Just another day in Los Santos America.

Where, then, does a series known for satirizing American culture go when its source material already defies comprehension? Can the series go as far as it has in the past in 2026, even? In the past, GTA has loved poking fun at right-wing extremists through details like GTA V‘s Ammu-Nation weapons stores. In 2025, being too loud against conservative targets can end your career, drown you in lawsuits, or limit dissemination. Can a game as important as GTA 6 still hide behind satire?

So far, it’s seemed like Rockstar’s answer is to leave some of that political skewering focus behind. Trailers for GTA 6 have emphasized the character drama of its two protagonists, Jason and Lucia, and their troubles building a life together. There’s still humor in there, mostly in the form of absurd NPCs like the guy who resembles the Florida Joker. Reports have also suggested that GTA 6 might take fewer crude shots toward minorities, but that was before our current climate of widespread political pressure on media companies that has seen major corporations ditch anything that could be pursued as “woke”.

Perhaps Houser’s lack of involvement in GTA 6 won’t have nearly as much of an impact as some fans fear. Games always evolve during the course of development. More importantly, games are never the product of a single person. Rockstar titles typically have more than a single writer on deck, nevermind the thousands of developers working on other aspects of their games. But the combination of Houser’s departure alongside factors like a changed development approach, wider political pressure, and even leaks all point toward a series that finds itself at a crossroads. Even something as small as the price point is opaque when it comes to GTA 6.

But if you ask Houser, he’s optimistic about where things go from here.

“I think it’s going to be exciting,” Houser said during the panel. “The game will be great, I’m sure.”