Dan Houser: No Greater Compliment Than GTA Comparisons
The former Rockstar lead says being measured against his Grand Theft Auto work is flattering, but hopes his new studio's games stand on their own.
Rockstar co-founder and former lead writer Dan Houser has said there is no greater compliment than being compared to his Grand Theft Auto games, though he hopes his new work can succeed on its own terms. In an interview with Variety, he said he does not know whether the comparisons will always follow him. He left Rockstar in 2020 and now runs the studio Absurd Ventures, which is developing several multimedia projects, including at least one open-world game, and has described its output as spanning games, comics and other media.
Houser described the pressure that came with making GTA titles and said he tried to manage it by working with as much integrity as he could muster and judging the work by whether it felt fresh rather than by how the market responded. He said he was proud of some Rockstar games even when they did not find commercial success, and would apply the same standard to his new projects, adding that it was a privilege to make anything at all.
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Where this story ran: one outlet on 4 October 2026. The summary above is written by GamersGuild; the links go to the original reports.