Rockstar Co-Founder Thought GTA San Andreas’ Hot Coffee Could Shut The Studio Down

Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser has admitted that he “constantly” worried that the studio might get shut down after Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas’ infamous Hot Coffee controversy.

For as long as Grand Theft Auto has been around, it’s been involved in some massive controversies. From Jack Thompson rallying against GTA 4 to Lindsay Lohan suing Rockstar over a character resembling her in GTA 5, the series is never far from getting into some kind of trouble. Without a doubt, though, the biggest controversy is San Andreas’ Hot Coffee mod.

For those who need a reminder, Hot Coffee was a minigame that was planned to be included in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas which basically let you play out a sex scene. It was removed from the final version of the game, but modders found the code for it and got it working, leading to massive legal issues and an Adults Only rating for the game from the ESRB.

Dan Houser Worried That San Andreas’ Hot Coffee Controversy Could Shut Rockstar Down

That Worry Even Played Into GTA 4’s Darker Tone

To this day, the Hot Coffee minigame remains one of the biggest controversies that Rockstar has ever gotten into and had a major impact on adult content in games. While Rockstar did eventually recover from the whole situation, the backlash and legal issues were so bad that co-founder Dan Houser was worried the studio might get shut down at one point.

Houser recently took part in an interview on the Lex Fridman Podcast, where he talked about his time at Rockstar and all the games that he worked on. During one part of the interview, Houser opens up about the development of Grand Theft Auto 4, which is widely considered to be the darkest entry in the series.

During the interview, Houser opens up about being unsure if he was happy in his life during his time writing on GTA 4. Houser notes that one of the reasons for his unhappiness at the time was the “Hot Coffee drama”, which was so bad that he “constantly thought we might be shut down” because of it.

Houser says that Rockstar had relative stability during the time of GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas, but that the Hot Coffee mod (combined with things going on in his personal life) made life feel “very unsure” during the development of GTA 4. That, in turn, bled into how dark that game ended up being, which shows just how much of an impact Hot Coffee really ended up having.