GTA 6 writers: who wrote Jason and Lucia after Dan Houser

Grand Theft Auto VI, out November 19, 2026 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, is “the first ‘GTA’ game made without” Dan Houser, as Variety put it on October 2, 2026. The name Rockstar puts on the story is Rupert Humphries, its senior vice president of narrative, backed by a team whose first members Dazed named on August 26, 2026.

Name	Role	Status on October 17, 2026
Rupert Humphries	senior vice president of narrative	at Rockstar, credited writer on GTA IV, GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2
Michael Wiafe	game writer on GTA 6	at Rockstar, quoted by Dazed on August 26, 2026
Elizabeth Gauvey-Kern	game writer on GTA 6	at Rockstar, quoted from LOVE by IGN on October 2, 2026
Alexa D’Agostino	game writer on GTA 6	at Rockstar, quoted from LOVE by IGN on October 2, 2026
Jamie-Lee Lloyd	senior art director for characters	at Rockstar, character look
Dan Houser	the series’ lead writer through Red Dead Redemption 2	left March 11, 2020, founded Absurd Ventures
Michael Unsworth	co-writer of GTA V and both Red Dead Redemption games	left in summer 2023, at Absurd Ventures since October 2023

The team in place

Humphries shared the writing credit with Dan Houser on Rockstar’s last three big scripts: GTA IV in 2008 (about 1,000 pages), GTA V in 2013 and Red Dead Redemption 2 in 2018 (about 2,000 pages for the main story). To Dazed he called GTA 6 “a Bonnie and Clyde-type narrative”, and described the groundwork in Florida:

“We will meet with ex-criminals, law enforcement, club promoters, gun dealers and anyone notorious or influential who’ll take our calls. We hang out, get a feeling for the place, listen to the stories, cross-reference that with books and journalism.”

On August 27, 2026, Rob Nelson, head of development at Rockstar North, told TroisCouleurs that Humphries then “delivers a page and a half of the story” summing it up.

Michael Wiafe, in the same Dazed package, on the trap of the Florida Man cliché:

“It’s easy to go in with a cynical view and say, ‘Well that’s weird, put it in the game,’ but we couldn’t just stop there. We have to bring a sense of discovery to the players too, not just repeat cliches that already exist.”

Two more game writers spoke about the couple to LOVE magazine, in excerpts IGN published on October 2, 2026, ahead of issue 27. Elizabeth Gauvey-Kern: “We wanted both protagonists to be vulnerable, tough, flawed, right sometimes, wrong sometimes, able to learn from each other.” Alexa D’Agostino: “When you are focusing on writing a fully realised person with their own wants, you’re going to get something perfectly imperfect.”

Jamie-Lee Lloyd handles how those characters look, and told Dazed that new tools and pipelines let the team build “the most detailed and varied character population we’ve ever created.”

The writers who left

Dan Houser had been lead writer on every GTA since London 1969, GamesRadar+ notes. He left Rockstar Games on March 11, 2020. In late September 2025 he told IGN that GTA 6 is “not going to be a story I wrote or a character set that I developed.” Rob Nelson dates the start of development to 2015, five years before that exit, so how much of Houser’s early work survives will only show in the credits.

Michael Unsworth, the third credited writer on GTA V, left Rockstar in summer 2023 after 16 years, VGC reported. In October 2023 he joined Houser’s Absurd Ventures as head of story and creative management. Published sources document nothing of his part in writing GTA 6.