Grand Theft Auto 6 won't just be the biggest game of 2026: it's the first series entry since the departure of several Rockstar big-hitters who've been involved almost from the start. Things didn't go so well for longtime GTA producer Leslie Benzies, whose studio Build A Rocket Boy released MindsEye earlier this year. That was a bit of a disaster, to the extent the developer immediately went through a round of layoffs.
Another departure was Dan Houser, a co-founder of Rockstar who left in 2020 to establish Absurd Ventures, which is so far living up to the name by releasing a graphic novel, an audio drama, a novel, and recently announcing the Absurdaverse. Before leaving Rockstar, Houser was a lead writer on every GTA game since GTA London 1969 (released in 1999), and with GTA5 first releasing in 2013 it's not unreasonable to think he may have had some involvement there.
Not so. In a new interview with IGN Houser says he had no involvement with GTA 6: "They're always a new story. It's not going to be a story I wrote or a character set that I developed, but I think it's going to be exciting. The game will be great, I'm sure."
Houser's asked if it'll be a bit weird playing a new GTA where he doesn't know everything that's in there. "In a way," says Houser, with the world-weary sigh of someone who's been there, done that. "It'll be a great privilege to have worked on something that big. I wrote the last 10 or 11 [GTAs]. I think the world's probably had enough GTA from me."
Elsewhere in the same interview Houser says that the story he's proudest of is Red Dead Redemption 2, before making the quietly heartbreaking point that Bully never got a sequel because of "bandwidth issues."
"You know, if you've got a small lead creative team and a small senior leadership crew, you just can't do all the projects you want," he said.
GTA6 was first announced for 2025, before a delay saw it pushed back into next year. The game is currently due to release on May 26, 2026.
