GTA veteran Lazlow Jones leaves Rockstar Games

After spending 19 years at Rockstar Games working as a writer, producer, and director, Lazlow Jones has left the GTA developer in April. The news was only discovered now as part of an update to his LinkedIn profile.

Jones has reportedly left due to personal issues, which we hope he recovers from soon.

As Jones says on LinkedIn, just to remark how important he was for the Rockstar Games IP all this time, he “worked for nearly 20 years at Rockstar Games as a Director, Producer, and Writer for history-making franchises Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, Bully, Max Payne, Midnight Club and more.”

“I was co-chair of the Rockstar Games Production department and was responsible for in-game creative audio and video content, working directly for and writing with Rockstar co-founder and Head of Creative Dan Houser.”

Jones was rather popular among the community because of his appearance as easter eggs or radio curator in the Grand Theft Auto franchise. His first radio appearance was in Grand Theft Auto: III, while in Grand Theft Auto V, he was even a character, the host of Fame Or Shame.

This is not the first recent departure in the Rockstar Games family – producer Leslie Benzies left in early 2016 after he had worked on all the Rockstar titles since GTA III.

Dan Houser, co-founder and head of creative, left Rockstar Games in March 2020, several months after writing Red Dead Redemption 2. His brother Sam Houser is now said to be leading the studio after Dan left, although it’s not clear who’s working on what project at the time being.

The next appointment in Rockstar Games’ schedule is a PS5 and Xbox Series X remaster of GTA V.

Now that the company is starting to ramp up GTA 6 production, a new generation of talents is seemingly leading the way following GTA Online success over the last decade.