Former Rockstar writer Dan Houser is skipping GTA VI to build new games

Dan Houser says he has not seen Grand Theft Auto VI and plans to keep it that way.

The co-founder and former head writer of Rockstar Games made the comment on Variety's Strictly Business podcast, in an interview published 2 October 2026. He said he wanted to avoid creative distraction or disruption while making his own games. Variety

Houser left Rockstar Games in 2020 and formally launched his new studio, Absurd Ventures, in 2023. Rockstar, owned by Take-Two Interactive, is now led by his brother and fellow co-founder, Sam Houser.

He explained that he does not play a lot of open-world games any more. Open-world games are titles set in large maps that players are free to roam. Houser said he finds himself pulling them apart in real time, studying the strengths and weaknesses of the teams that made them, which stops him enjoying them.

Instead, he is developing two titles at Absurd Ventures. Both are original ideas, built outside the crime series that made his name.

One is an open-world comedy game. Houser said it is focused on comedy and on character memory, meaning characters recalling what the player has done.

The other is a dystopian science-fiction game about a video game production gone wrong. At its centre is a rogue artificial intelligence that discovers sentience. Houser said the idea grows out of A Better Paradise, one of the fictional worlds his studio is building.

Absurd Ventures is working across three original worlds, or intellectual properties: A Better Paradise, American Caper and Absurdaverse. The studio is developing the Absurdaverse as both a TV show and a video game, with the first round of voice casting unveiled earlier this year. Variety

For fans, this means a clean break. The writer behind some of Rockstar's best-known stories is not watching his old studio's next release, because he is busy trying to make players laugh and think somewhere else entirely.