GTA 6: Dan Houser wrote 12 GTA games, then left Rockstar in 2020

Dan Houser, born in London in November 1973, co-founded Rockstar Games in December 1998 with his brother Sam Houser. Head writer and vice president of creativity, he left the studio on March 11, 2020, a month after Take-Two Interactive announced his resignation. Grand Theft Auto VI, due November 19, 2026 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, is the first game in the series written without him.

Two decades of Rockstar scripts

Wikipedia credits him as a writer on twelve Grand Theft Auto titles, including GTA III (2001), GTA IV (2008) and GTA V (2013), and as a producer on six. He also wrote Bully, Max Payne 3 and both Red Dead Redemption games. In October 2018 he gave Vulture the length of Red Dead Redemption 2’s main story, 60 hours, a figure Rockstar has kept to itself for GTA 6 (see how long GTA 6’s story is).

Game	Release	Credited writers
Grand Theft Auto IV	April 29, 2008	Dan Houser, Rupert Humphries
Grand Theft Auto V	September 17, 2013	Dan Houser, Rupert Humphries, Michael Unsworth
Red Dead Redemption 2	October 26, 2018	Dan Houser, Michael Unsworth, Rupert Humphries

Of the three, only Rupert Humphries stayed. Dazed named him Rockstar’s senior vice president of narrative on August 26, 2026, in a cover story that also featured Michael Wiafe, a game writer on GTA 6. Michael Unsworth left Rockstar in 2023, while Dan’s brother Sam Houser still runs the studio.

What he has said about GTA 6

Speaking to IGN at LA Comic Con, in remarks GamesRadar+ reported on September 29, 2025, he settled the question: GTA 6 is “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.” Then: “I wrote the last 10 or 11 [GTA games]. I think the world’s probably had enough GTA from me.”

A year later, on Variety’s Strictly Business podcast published October 2, 2026, he said he had skipped the 27-minute Extended Look that aired on Netflix in August: “I haven’t seen it yet. I will try and avoid it because I always try and avoid stuff that’s going to distract or disrupt me creatively.”

Absurd Ventures, since 2021

He registered Absurd Ventures in Delaware in February 2021 and announced it publicly in June 2023, which is why Variety and Kotaku both date the company to 2023. The studio published the novel A Better Paradise on October 14, 2025, then launched the American Caper comic series with Dark Horse Comics in November 2025.

Two games are in development, as he described them to Variety. One is “an open-world comedy which is trying to really lean into comedy and character memory,” with news promised “in the next few months.” The other is a dystopian sci-fi game drawn from the A Better Paradise world, about a rogue AI that becomes self-aware.