Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser left the studio because making GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 took too long to complete.

Dan Houser, co-founder of Rockstar, left the studio back in 2020, looking to start something fresh and begin a new journey - one that wouldn’t take as long to create as his previous projects.

Speaking with the BBC on the Front Row Podcast about his debut novel, A Better Paradise, Houser also discussed why he left Rockstar, saying: “The scale of the last couple [meaning GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 games] were beyond any imagining,” he continued. “I worked with incredibly talented people, so thinking that group, me piggybacking off their vast brains, could do something amazing, that’s why I worked there.”

Creating such titles, which span hundreds of hours of playtime and take even longer to develop, led to fatigue, forcing Houser to step away and take a much-needed break. “It can be a tough journey getting things at that scale, with that many moving parts, finished. You’ve got 450,000 lines of dialogue, and an equal number of other components all trying to assemble themselves. It’s this huge production experience.”

“I don’t know if I had another one of those games in me.”

Now, Houser’s new studio, Absurd Ventures, aims to create new intellectual properties across various mediums, including video games, live-action and animated television, film, fiction podcasts, books, and comic books. With his novel set to release next year in 2026, this marks the beginning of Houser’s new venture…but could it take just as long as GTA VI release?