Director of digital preservation Andrew Borman has uncovered a lot of secret history while trawling through The Strong National Museum's recently acquired archives of the now defunct Saints Row studio Volition, but that doesn't make any individual find less surprising: apparently, Volition was keeping close watch on Grand Theft Auto developer Rockstar back in 2007.
"Wasn't [expecting] to see an October 2007 meeting (partial) recording on a MiniDV tape," Borman writes on Bluesky alongside a photo of a meeting slide which ponders, "if GTA slips, will we change the SR2 release date?"
"Interesting to hear a little bit about how Volition was monitoring GTA," Borman continues.
The studio – which shut down after 30 years in 2023 – wasn't new to its paranoia. Rockstar's legacy followed it like a weird smell. Around 2003, Volition wanted to create an open-world heist game called Underground – but its marketing team decided it wasn't as impressive as GTA 3.
So, Borman tells me, while he hasn't watched the entire, possibly company-wide Saints Row 2 meeting in full, "I believe the concern was that GTA 4 would slip from its April 2008 [release date] to later in the year around Saints Row 2." That game came out in October 2008.
Volition "didn't think it would slip at that point, but conversations were had with THQ just in case, and were waiting to see what happened to determine if they would have to move Saints Row 2.
"Volition/THQ were also concerned if it got delayed beyond Saints Row 2, that they would have to compete with the image of what people thought GTA 4 was going to be. They were also monitoring for any DLC and if that would disrupt their release."
"I imagine there are many similar conversations around GTA 6," Borman concludes, "both in the sense of, 'Can developers beat it to market and succeed?' and the impact that it will have after it is released."
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