Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser is leaving the company

Effective March 11

Rockstar is losing one of its most important employees. It’s also losing a co-founder.

Dan Houser, Rockstar’s vice president for creative, will be exiting the company in approximately a month. According to a new with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Houser will leave Rockstar on March 11, 2020. This follows a long hiatus that began last spring.

In the filing, Rockstar parent company Take-Two says “We are extremely grateful for his contributions. Rockstar Games has built some of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful game worlds, a global community of passionate fans and an incredibly talented team, which remains focused on current and future projects.”

Houser has been a key figure in Rockstar’s history. He founded the company alongside three other people (including his brother Sam) in 1998. Houser was also a producer and writer on most of Rockstar’s major games. He has writing credits on titles like Red Dead Redemption 1 and 2, Grand Theft Auto V, Max Payne 3, and Bully.

Houser’s departure comes at an interesting time because Rockstar has seemed increasingly interested in online components. Grand Theft Auto V is still massively popular and successful, and it’s because of GTA Online rather than the narrative-driven singleplayer mode. It’s unclear if the two are related in any way, but with recent reports about GTA VI‘s development, it’s almost a foregone conclusion that Rockstar will again lean into online play. It might be as simple as the stories Houser wants to tell aren’t the stories Rockstar wants to tell anymore.

[Take-Two Interactive]