While Rockstar Games is known for its releases offering players epic sandboxes to play around in, its titles also tend to feature well-regarded stories, thanks to the writing of one of the studio’s co-founders, Dan Houser. In an interview with IGN, however, Houser has revealed that Grand Theft Auto 6 will be the first game in the series since Grand Theft Auto: London 1969 to not feature his writing.
It is worth noting that Houser left Rockstar Games back in 2020 after having written for several Grand Theft Auto titles, as well as Max Payne 3 and both Red Dead Redemption and its sequel Red Dead Redemption 2. When asked whether it will be weird for him to play a GTA game for the first time without knowing everything about it, Houser also joked that “I think the world has probably had enough GTA from me.”
“I think it’s a great privilege to have worked on something that big,” said Houser about the Grand Theft Auto franchise. “I wrote the last ten or eleven of them, so I think the world has probably had enough GTA from me. There’s always a new story so it’s not going to be a story that I wrote or a character set that I developed. I think it’s going to be exciting. The game will be great.”
Interestingly, the timeline of Houser’s departure from Rockstar Games coincides with a report from back in November 2021 indicating that development on Grand Theft Auto 6 had been rebooted in 2020. Whether the reboot was in any way related to Houser is unknown. However, this rebooted development followed up on troubled development, and many gameplay elements and narrative details had been changed. The same rumours have also indicated that Take-Two Interactive wanted to initially unveil GTA 6 in 2020.
Take-Two Interactive had also noted earlier this year that development on Grand Theft Auto 6 began “in earnest” in 2020. The company made the statement in an earnings call, and its use of the word “earnest” indicated that there was likely some work that had already been done for the game before 2020.
Shortly after announcing Houser’s departure from Rockstar Games, Take-Two Interactive CEO Zelnick had spoken about how the studio has “really never been stronger”. Addressing questions about the stability of Rockstar Games in the wake of Dan Houser’s departure and under the leadership of studio president Sam Houser, Zelnick thanked Dan for his contributions and noted that Sam is a strong leader for the studio.
Grand Theft Auto 6 is currently being developed for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, and is slated for release on March 26, 2026. Rockstar Games has been fairly enthusiastic about the release, since it referred to the upcoming launch as “the largest game launch in history” in a since-deleted job listing on its official website.
“With the continued growth of Grand Theft Auto Online and the upcoming release of Grand Theft Auto 6, the successful candidate will lead both the evolution and operation of the data platform supporting what will be the largest game launch in history,” wrote the company in the job listing earlier this month.
