GTA's success „brought the US government down on us,” says ex-Rockstar co-founder. „Some people quit, it was really tough”
GTA creator Dan Houser talked about Rockstar Games' past conflicts with the U.S. government, as well as contemporary threats posed by the development of AI.
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In recent weeks, Dan Houser, co-founder of Rockstar Games, has become particularly active in the media. This is largely due to the promotional tour related to his studio, Absurd Ventures, which he established after leaving Rockstar in 2020. Even though his talks mainly focus on the book A Better Paradise, the interviews are also spilling more and more juicy behind-the-scenes stories about how some of the biggest Rockstar hits came to be.
In the latest interview given to The Chris Evans Breakfast Show for Virgin Radio (you can watch the material at the end of the article), Houser revisited the tumultuous beginnings of the GTA 3 era and subsequent installments of the series. He revealed that the enormous success of these titles didn't make life easier for the studio—quite the opposite.
Our experience was [that] success created loads of problems. It was just worth it to have fun and do what you would do, Houser admitted.
The creator mentioned that just deciding to make games for adults was enough to stir up some controversy among certain groups. As a result, Rockstar Games—which had just shown the world what a game for a mature player could look like—quickly became a convenient target for attacks.
Rockstar in the government's sights
Houser stated that at the peak of GTA's popularity, the U.S. government targeted Rockstar, accusing the company of spreading indecent content.
They decided we were the only people on the internet peddling pornography, apparently, which was ridiculous. And they nearly shut us down, we got fined a huge amount of money. It was very disruptive to the company, and some of my team members quit, and it was really tough.
According to Houser, the crackdown had a political basis—he believed it was mainly driven by centrist Democrats who wanted to create a media "scapegoat." They didn't want to mess with Hollywood or the music industry, so video games became an easy target.
Even though they didn't mention the scandal by name, it seems like Houser was talking about that famous 2005 incident when modders found a hidden sexual minigame in the code of GTA: San Andreas that wasn't supposed to be part of the regular gameplay.
Interestingly, Houser talks about the days when politicians were all over Rockstar for the content in their games. Fast forward a few years, and the studio is once again catching heat from some political circles, but this time for a totally different reason. This time it wasn't about violence or eroticism in games, but about layoffs.
Artificial intelligence will self-destruct
In the same interview, Houser once again spoke on one of the hottest topics of recent months—the development of artificial intelligence. The creator of GTA didn't hide his skepticism.
Some of these people trying to define the future of humanity, creativity, or whatever it is using AI are not the most humane or creative people. They’re sort of saying we’re better at being human than you are, and it’s obviously not true. One of the other things we’re trying to capture is that humanity is being pulled in a direction by a certain group of people who maybe aren’t fully rounded humans, he explained.
Houser also warned that the development of AI might enter a self-destructive phase. According to him, tools based on language models are starting to draw data from content generated by other models, which could lead to a loop:
[...] the models scour the internet for information, but the internet’s going to get more and more full of information made by the models, so it’s sort of like when we fed cows with cows and got mad cow disease. [..] they’re already running out of data.
That's a nod to the "dead Internet theory," which basically says that most online traffic is just bots, the web is getting flooded with auto-generated content, and AI systems are just feeding off each other's creations, leading to a slow decline in quality and meaning. Houser believes that while algorithms may excel in technical tasks, they will not replace human creativity.
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Author: Kamil Kleszyk
At Gamepressure.com deals with various jobs. So you can expect from him both news about the farming simulator and a text about the impact of Johnny Depp's trial on the future of Pirates of the Caribbean. Introvert by vocation. Since childhood, he felt a closer connection to humanities than to exact sciences. When after years of learning came a time of stagnation, he preferred to call it his "search for a life purpose." In the end, he decided to fight for a better future, which led him to the place where he is today.
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