Saints Row 1 designer reckons the series is 'dead,' adding that Embracer 'ghosted' him after a comeback pitch: 'I wish things were different'

Saints Row is dead. Long live Saints Row? No, it's actually dead, at least according to the design director on the first game, Chris Stockman. As Eurogamer reported, Stockman said as much in a Discord for his new company, Bit Planet Games. A thread on X from user papaRPG popularized a screenshot of Stockman responding to a comment lamenting the series' recent radio silence in January: "I think the franchise is dead," he wrote.

"I get the sense that Embracer has zero ability to do anything with it," Stockman continues in the screenshot. "I wish things were different. I tried my best to offer a path forward but they've ghosted me."

It seems like Stockman is referencing the pitch we reported on back in November, wherein he wanted to take the series back to its "roots." Probably a popular decision since the so-so reboot landed with an unceremonious thud back in 2022. The death of Volition followed a year later, when parent company Embracer restructured its business.

More recently on the Bit Planet Discord, Stockman reiterated that the ball is in Embracer's court. He wrote Feb. 17, "As long as they are in business they own it … they could license it to me or contract us to manage it, but I've done all I can do to try and make that happen."

A return for the venerable Grand Theft Auto-like would be an uphill battle in the best of circumstances. The series was, in both its incarnations as a somewhat grounded crime game and as a silly, sci-fi romp with dubstep guns and giant dildos, a single thread in the tapestry of anarchic crime sandboxes that dominated the mid-to-late aughts. The surrounding zeitgeist is part of why it worked so well, especially as it morphed into zany self-parody over time.

The novelty of open-world playgrounds has worn off and that style of game isn't as omnipresent anymore, megalithic Rockstar blockbusters like Red Dead and GTA notwithstanding—if Saints Row really is dead, that's a fate it shares with Prototype, Crackdown, Sleeping Dogs, Sunset Overdrive, and so on. It's hard to imagine what form a reboot could take to actually feel fresh. If you just want to play the old ones though, they're still there and a lot of fun.