GTA 6 release in Trump’s presidency, Dan Houser’s fear becomes true

In 2018, Rockstar’s co-founder Dan Houser casually took a sigh of relief that GTA 6 wouldn’t be released during the chaotic presidency of Trump. However, 6 years ahead, the story has changed with Trump’s comeback.

The GTA series goes well with satirizing American culture. However according to the co-founder of Rockstar Games, Dan Houser it would be difficult to do so during Trump’s presidency.

He said this back in 2018 in an interview with GQ. Referencing the first round of Trump’s government, he said that the political environment became extremely polarized. This would take any risk of parody to “beyond satire” unnerving one group or not the other.

Now that Trump is returning to the political scene, Houser’s fear may impact GTA 6

GTA 6 is expected to release in the Fall of 2025. Around that time Trump will be leading from the Oval Office. Given that GTA 6 has been in development for more than a decade now, it could result in looking “out of date within two minutes” as Houser said.

The highly anticipated GTA 6 carries the pressure of extremely sky-touching expectations as well, particularly after the tremendous success of GTA 5 which still gives a tough competition after a decade.

Now along with the pressure of perfection, Rockstar Games will have to face the highly potent political era that Houser was initially concerned about.

Furthermore, Houser’s fear is also in line with Trump’s statement blaming violence in video games for the increasing number of mass shootings at a time. He suggested that access to games, GTA being the direct example, should be made harder.

Recently gaming community was also concerned about Trump banning games during his presidency due to the same statement resurfacing on the internet.  However, Trump has not made any statement regarding this and has also appeared in Adin Ross’ stream who became famous for playing GTA in the first place.

GTA 6 could also face a backlash for woke-ism

Rockstar has reportedly also tried to fix the frat boy culture to avoid causing harm to the sentiments of any group by avoiding punching down jokes. Additionally, GTA 6 will reportedly feature the first playable female character in the series.

There are ongoing debates on social media over the demand for female characters and their portrayal in the games. While gamers are also blaming DEI for spoiling the character designs of recent female characters.

Additionally, Elon Musk who will have the potential role in the new cabinet after his strong support to Trump has repeatedly voiced against the woke pressure in the games. He previously called the Western censorship of Japanese game developers “insane” and also recently said “Make video games great again!” when he was inquired about the “woke mind virus.” at Pennsylvania town hall.

There will be hard scrutiny on whether GTA 6 takes the woke road or not which will satisfy one group while disappointing the other.

Will Rockstar further delay GTA 6 to dodge Trump’s presidency?

Dan Houser has also left the company in June to start his gaming studio venture.

However, there could be many other reasons for the delay given the history of Rockstar in delaying its titles for the sake of perfection.

Furthermore, pushing the release of the most anticipated game further 4 years is in itself enough for immense fan backlash. Therefore, no such plan has been hinted at by the company.

In fact, Rockstar has recently reconfirmed that the game is up for release next year as announced with whole gaming industry looking forward to it.