Former Rockstar President Adds GTA, RDR2 Veterans at New Studio

Former Rockstar Games president and co-founder Dan Houser has brought on some of the developer’s most prominent staff at his new studio, Absurd Ventures. Rockstar Games is one of the biggest developers out there and it has maintained a pretty key creative team for decades. Dan Houser was a writer on almost every Grand Theft Auto game, Max Payne 3, Bully, and the both Red Dead Redemption games with many pointing to him as one of the reasons why the studio was so successful. Of course, there are literally thousands of people working at Rockstar Games so it seems a bit silly to suggest one person is the glue holding everything together, but he is almost undoubtedly a key component of those stories. When news broke that Dan Houser was leaving Rockstar Games after Red Dead Redemption 2, fans began to wonder what could cause such a sudden departure.

While we still don’t totally know why Houser opted to leave, he has moved on to other projects while his brother Sam Houser continues to run Rockstar Games. Within the last couple of years, Houser started building a new company called Absurd Ventures. While many assumed this would be a new video game studio, that’s not exactly what it is. Absurd Ventures will make video games, but it is also working on other mediums such as television and literature. To help realize his vision, Houser has brought on some other key figures that left Rockstar in recent years: Lazlow Jones and Michael Unsworth. Fans will know Lazlow Jones most prominently from his work in the GTA series where he played an eclectic radio host who players bully in Grand Theft Auto V. He also served as a writer on some Rockstar projects. Unsworth was a writer at Rockstar, eventually earning the title of “Vice President of Writing” and worked on most of the studio’s titles including the award-winning Red Dead Redemption 2.

Unsworth left Rockstar Games this past summer, so it’s likely he would’ve hammered out most of, if not the entire story of Grand Theft Auto VI and maybe even started scripts for other projects. The first trailer for GTA 6 is expected to be released within the next week or two, but we have no idea when the game itself will be released. Hopefully, it’s not far off, but it’s expected to be Rockstar’s biggest game to date, if not the biggest game ever made.