Rockstar Co-Founder Says GTA Games Won't Work if Set Outside the US

"We made a little thing in London 26 years ago, GTA London, for the top-down, for the PS1. That was pretty cute and fun, as the first mission pack ever for PlayStation 1,"

"I think for a full GTA game, we always decided that there was so much Americana inherent in the IP, it would be really hard to make it work in London or anywhere else."

"You know, you needed guns, you needed these larger-than-life characters. It just felt like the game was so much about America, possibly from an outsider's perspective. But you know, that was so much about what the thing was that it wouldn't really have worked in the same way elsewhere."

The Grand Theft Auto franchise is fundamentally rooted in American culture, urban environments, and mythic tropes that shape its tone and mechanics. Early experiments included London mission packs and GTA 2's futuristic American city, but mainline entries consistently employ fictionalized U.S. locales modeled on real cities. The series emphasizes firearms and larger-than-life characters, elements presented as more common or narratively convenient in an American context. Those elements drive the series' satire, storytelling, and gameplay scale, creating a specific cultural register that would be difficult to replicate authentically outside the United States.

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