Grand Theft Auto 6, when it eventually releases in 2026, will probably be the biggest video game launch of all time. GTA6 is the game so many are looking towards as the saviour of the industry. And yet, there’s something keeping me from getting too excited about it personally—with Rockstar’s unbelievably exploitative labour practices, from crunch to its more recent union busting, it has become the very thing its games so fervently spoke out against. It used to satirise the likes of Apple and Facebook—now it just is Apple and Facebook.
That is to say, satire is supposed to help us envision a better world. Grand Theft Auto, as handled by Rockstar, tells us this is as good as it gets. Here’s why I’m not excited for Grand Theft Auto 6.
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Check out the excellent reporting @PeopleMakeGames has done on Rockstar’s recent union busting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9nOwjeznjI
0:00 – Practicing what you preach
2:27 – Rockstar is selling you what it told you was bad
4:43 – Rockstar’s labour practices
6:20 – Where the real problems lie
8:35 – I’ve had enough of Rockstar and GTA6
10:15 – Outro
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hell yes
I disagree. This is just rewriting history. It's objectively a smart piece of satire. The ending imo is what does not work. GTA 4 gives you a moral dilemma and you lose something with either ending. You feel the game punishes you for your actions of being a killer, eventually mastered in RDR2, but GTA 5 : The Death wish ending lets the characters off too easy. And the other two endings are very out of character and abrupt.
Imo, GTA is gross, badly executed satire even if rockstar weren't engaging in the business practices it does. It a LOT of shallow, surface level critique, most of which GTA has handled with more depth before, that the story then upholds and highlights as fun. The story is thin but overly long. Rockstar being vile only makes it worse.
And the audience that gets genuinely angry about a game delay for a title while ignoring the crunch, and the vaporware dev times on titles like bloodlines 2 or duke forever, actively encourage the company and make the situation just that little bit worse
One of the issues of any form of rebellion, be it critique, satire, or denigration, is that it necessitates reiteration of the thing being rebelled against.
While all this was true and important to say, I was kind of hoping that this video would've been more about how the satire in GTAV's single player campaign is quite shallow, in hindsight. How Franklin has the beginning stages of a more proto-typical GTA protagonist, only to get steamrolled into Michael and Trevor's plotline with minimal investment on his end. Or how, in 2013, they tied to make social commentary on the War On Terror with stuff like a torture simulator minigame.
Shark cards??? Have you play the game recently, those are bloody worthless right now
I think your critique is mostly valid, except for the moral high ground lexicon
Trust me, I hate the modern day capitalist authoritarianism, and kinda wish we could have a LESS AUTHORITARIAN Alternative
but if it irritates me , that moral relativism, alienates everyone whit more diferent positions
Heck maybe that's what you are baking on idk
But atleast your free to say whatever you want, Right?
Great video, you're probably the first creator I've used the hype feature on just now, you've earned that
Wow, a trenchant, well-argued video essay that's not just under two hours, not under ONE hour, but under HALF an hour??? What is this, 2012??
Money is necessary for every person on the planet it is greed that makes things messy. It is greed that puts people in bad positions not money. Every single one of these comedians already has money. Kevin Hart Is already worth a ton of money. so why not hold on to your convictions? since you have nothing else but money.
My mother used to say when I was a little kid " Matthew there are some people that are so poor all they have is money" Just look at their big empty houses none of them look lived in. They don't have anybody they could trust. Everybody's out to get something from them.
Are you trying to say Dave Chappelle or Joe Rogan are not political? give me a break. All these people just like in the sport of boxing that are selling out each other for money, there will be repercussions for it. Something is always lost.
Incredible video
❤️
Well done
Hell yeah.
Im actually more excited to the next armored core game than gta 6 LMAO
I think that the shortfall here is assuming that GTA has a substantive point to all its satire. It's just mean and cynical in every direction at once. There are no heroes, nothing is worth fighting for, everything is rotten. I am dreading the release of GTA6.
I know you cite your sources in the description, but it would be nice to see them in the bottom right corner of the video, like they do on Kurzgesagt.
GTA online is a very pro-consumerist, individualist, capitalist grind game. You start out with nothing, and make yourself a multi-millionaire CEO with tons of assets, that is the game, that is the endgoal, that is what most people still play it for nowadays.
That is not what it always was necessarily, although it was always part of the experience, over the years, to keep the player count up and sell shark cards, Rockstar has leaned more and more into that grind.
I wrote this comment before watching the video, where he basically said just that.
Satire can only function as satire if you engage with it as satire.
You said all the right stuff, so right that nobody else says it. All we have is each other, and that's all we need.
Happily haven’t played / payed for a rockstar game since gta 4 on a steam sale
One of my biggest realizations playing GTAV (years late, as someone who played GTA2-IV day 1) was that a game which satirized American culture became a pillar of American culture itself and by GTAV could no longer be in on the joke, and instead, like South Park did, had to begin punching down on the working class and be the very thing it was satirizing previously.
Decency, fairness, being nice. They are all things humans made up and to this day we don't even agree regarding what those terms even mean. I am nice, i am good, judged by myself and i am not wrong.
Seeing Peter Thiel's hair makes me pretty sure we shouldn't make decisions how Peter Thiel does.
Very cool of you to reference/link to the People Make Games piece. Those guys do some great and truly necessary reporting. I probably would have posted about it if you hadn’t 😅
Anyway, great video, and I’m completely behind your sentiments. I also appreciate you not couching your language in dumb euphemisms when talking about the far right. Too many people do that, especially on YT these days, if they even address the subject at all.
"in a world of increasing authoritharianism"
> show footage of trump
meanwhile,
– the uk is banning jury trials while jailing increasingly more people for "speech offences"
– the eu is fining social media for not censoring enough while banning private chats
ok bro…
Dan Houser is a pretentious mediocre writer.
There is a huge difference between stating "GTA is a satirical failure," and "Rockstar is an embodiment of hypocrisy."
"Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself. Even those who would critique capital end up reinforcing it instead…"
-Joyce Messier
Disco Elysium
🏴☠️
Yeah, yeah, yeah, suits are bad, the same thing that's been said forever, in books, talks, videos, and absolutely nothing changes, on the contrary, everything gets worse. Did you know that soon there will be a trillionaire? Evil always seems to win man.
Eat the rich.
Its not the devs who want to unionize rockstar, its the ancillary staff (office boys, secretaries, mailroom workers, marketing dweebs, and the junior creatives who think they should be as handsomely rewarded as the people who actually make the games).
And no unions are not the panacea for all problems in the workplace (unless they represent people who do actual dangerous jobs), they generally create way more problems than they solve.
I say this, having been a member of two different unions over the course of my working life.
Couldn't agree with you more. Unions and collective action are the only way to fight against these people. The more that time passes, the less interested and excited I am for GTA 6. Maybe I'll pick it up used so they won't get any of my money.
Not watched your work for a little while, and I'm glad I came back. Your writings got more teeth, and this is a great video.
I never liked gta 5 and when they rolled out the shark cards I was glad to have not fallen for the ruse.
What's sad is how so many companies jumped on the bandwagon of "making money by any means possible", and run with it full force because they know they can. Satire from GTA 4 or 5 has now largely become reality. Rockstar's unabashed decisions with GTA Online make it clear as day where their priorities really are.
I look at it similar to how a child is, before they're grown up. I remember being 8 years old or so, thinking how wonderful it would be to grow up, and the kinds of things I'd get to do as an adult. In reality, some 25 years later, it has not been – at all – what younger me imagined it would be.
Teenagers in 2008 or 2013 are in their mid 20s to upper 30s now. The life we all imagined for ourselves in those days has not come to pass, especially because of the hypocrisy of so many corporations. To have corps say one thing and do another is a slap in the face to all of us.
Even looking JUST at how game companies would pump out games in a short amount of time, where GTA 6 MAY be coming out next year. That's THIRTEEN YEARS of R* peddling GTA 5, milking as much as they can, with an unknown promise of GTA 6. Hell, I'd be skeptical. But overall, it's a shame to see at least Millennials and Gen Z go from "given promise about life" as youngsters to the cynical side that we were never warned about.
Almost feels like GTA has gone down the route of being mainly about freeform addictive gameplay, similar to many games these days – to be fair I still enjoy playing in the free roam of San Andreas, 4 & 5 yet I've only replayed 5's story once when my save file corrupted – never would have done so if I didn't need to.
I thought this video was going to be about how satire and dialogues of GTA V got worse, instead it's some random unstructured rant.
Well said! Commenting for the alg
I could never get onto the games myself as a lover of fantasy and sci fi. So, crimes times in human land always looked stupid and broing to me…
In the last few years, I've been trying really hard to be conscious of where my money goes. I know in the long run, voting with one's wallet is fruitless because the overwhelming majority of people don't care. But if I buy from a small studio or indie dev, I just feel better knowing a greater share of the money I've spent is going towards a game's development instead of a CEO's offshore bank account and a marketing department. Even if I'm not part of the solution, I feel I'm at least not part of the problem.
Companies don't make video games, or movies, or write stories – people, artists, creatives do these things. And when these people leave – all that's left is a name, shareholders and greed. You just some key departures for it all to come down.
you can tell how the big shots really feel by creating a mission where we terrorize an actor into making a shitty movie for a shitty money while Michael hammers down how he should be grateful to be exploited
Sometimes you do need a rent-lowering gunshot to keep things in check, and this was a good one.
usa is far worst than saudi arabia and no its not about trump only
chicken sandwich
Compare the jokes in the first couple Ratchet and Clank to the more recent ones
Hell yeah, man, great essay. As soon as I saw the title/thumbnail, I knew this would be a treat