Saints Row

Saints Row is an open-world crime franchise developed by Volition and published across its run by THQ and Deep Silver, running from 2006 through the closure of the studio in 2023. Beginning as a Grand Theft Auto competitor set in the fictional city of Stilwater, the franchise escalated through four mainline entries from grounded gang warfare to superpowered alien invasions before a 2022 reboot failed commercially and led directly to Volition’s shutdown after thirty years of game development. The Saints Row intellectual property remains with Deep Silver with no sequel currently announced.

Saints Row and Saints Row 2 (2006 and 2008)

The original Saints Row released August 29, 2006, for Xbox 360 as an early exclusive that gave the console a GTA-style game before Grand Theft Auto IV arrived on the platform. Set in the fictional Midwest city of Stilwater, the game followed a player-created character joining the Third Street Saints gang and fighting to control the city against three rival factions. The gang customization, character creation depth, and cooperative multiplayer distinguished it from Rockstar’s series in ways that built a specific audience. Saints Row 2 in October 2008 expanded the city, deepened the customization, and pushed the franchise’s humor harder, and is still considered by many fans the peak of the series. A PC port of Saints Row 2 had significant technical problems and an attempted patch project led by community modder Mike Watson was left incomplete following his death in 2021.

Saints Row: The Third and Saints Row IV

Saints Row: The Third in November 2011 marked the franchise’s deliberate shift toward comedic excess over grounded crime drama. Set in the new city of Steelport, the game introduced STAG, a paramilitary anti-gang force, alongside a tone that leaned into spectacle and self-awareness rather than the street-level crime of the first two entries. The shift divided the existing audience while bringing in players who wanted something more irreverent than GTA. Saints Row IV in August 2013 pushed the concept to its logical extreme: the protagonist becomes the President of the United States, aliens destroy the Earth, and the game takes place in a Matrix-style simulation where the player has superpowers. Originally conceived as an expansion to The Third, Saints Row IV was the last entry to reach commercial success under Volition’s original identity.

The Reboot and Volition’s Closure

The Saints Row reboot, released August 23, 2022, set the franchise in the Southwestern desert city of Santo Ileso with an entirely new cast of characters and a tonal attempt to split the difference between the grounded original games and the absurdist later entries. The game was received poorly by critics and fans, with criticism focused on flat writing, technical problems at launch, and a world that failed to generate the energy either tonal direction had produced separately. Post-launch reports indicated that Volition had originally wanted to develop a sequel to The Third rather than a reboot, and that THQ Nordic had rejected both that pitch and a subsequent reboot pitch that retained the original cast before the game that shipped was developed. Embracer Group, THQ Nordic’s parent company, closed Volition on August 31, 2023, citing the reboot’s performance as a primary factor in the studio’s financial case. Deep Silver thanked Volition’s developers on the day of the closure. No Saints Row project has been announced since.