On August 29, 2006, Saints Row was released on Xbox 360 — the first game in the series developed by American studio Volition and published by THQ. The project immediately attracted attention due to its obvious similarities to Grand Theft Auto, but Saints Row eventually managed to build its own audience and become a well-known franchise in its own right.
The history of Saints Row began before the name itself appeared. In the early 2000s, Volition was working on a game called Underground — an open-world crime project set in an open city. However, during development, the team concluded that the project was inferior to Grand Theft Auto III, which had already established new standards for the genre.
Instead of continuing work on Underground, Volition changed the concept and began creating a new game. This time, the team decided not to hide GTA's influence, but to use the familiar formula as the foundation for its own project. As a result, Saints Row was born.
The first game was set in the fictional American city of Stilwater. Players created their own character and joined the 3rd Street Saints gang, gradually expanding its influence.
The game was built around an open world, vehicles, shootouts, criminal missions, and side activities. Because of this, comparisons to GTA were practically unavoidable.
At the same time, Volition added its own elements. One of the main features was the Respect system, which determined access to new missions. The game also allowed players to extensively customize the appearance of the main character.
Saints Row became one of the first major GTA-style games on Xbox 360, giving it an important advantage: at the time of its release, GTA IV did not yet exist, while the previous game in the series — GTA: San Andreas — was a previous-generation title.
After the release, critics had one main question: could Saints Row compete with GTA?
The similarities were so obvious that reviewers regularly called the game a GTA clone. GameSpot specifically pointed out the almost identical foundation: an open city, vehicles, shootouts, a criminal storyline, radio stations, and dark humor. At the same time, the publication acknowledged that the game had enough strengths of its own.
The reviews were positive. GameSpot gave Saints Row an 8.3/10, while Metacritic gave it 81/100 based on 74 critic reviews.
The game also benefited from the timing of its release. Saints Row launched in August 2006, when the Xbox 360 was rapidly gaining popularity, while GTA IV would not arrive until April 2008. Chris Stockman, the creator of the first Saints Row, later noted that this timing was one of the key factors behind the game's success: there was effectively no other major project of this type on Xbox 360.
After the first game, Volition gradually moved away from the most serious crime-focused formula.
Saints Row 2 was released in 2008 and significantly expanded upon the original game. Over time, the series increasingly focused on absurdity, dark humor, and exaggeration.
In Saints Row: The Third, the developers pushed the series even further toward crazy situations and comedy. Saints Row IV went even further: the protagonist gained superpowers, while the story turned into a science-fiction adventure involving aliens and virtual reality.
As a result, the franchise gradually stopped being simply “another GTA” and developed its own style.
The popularity of the series grew along with its scale. Saints Row became one of Volition's main franchises, and the studio continued developing the series throughout the following decade.
However, after Saints Row IV, the series began to lose momentum. In 2015, the standalone game Agents of Mayhem was released, using ideas and technologies developed by Volition, but it failed to replicate the success of Saints Row.
In 2022, the franchise received a full reboot — Saints Row. The developers introduced new characters, a new gang, and a new city, Santo Ileso, attempting to restart the series. However, the game received a significantly weaker reception than its predecessors.
The following year, the situation became even more serious: on August 31, 2023, Embracer Group shut down Volition after 30 years of operation. The studio's final game was the 2022 Saints Row reboot.
Following Volition's closure, the future of the franchise remains uncertain. However, Saints Row remains recognizable among fans of open-world games.
Over nearly two decades, the series went from a project openly compared to GTA to a franchise with its own style, characters, and audience.
It all began on August 29, 2006, when the first Saints Row was released on Xbox 360.
As a reminder, Guild Wars 2: how ArenaNet tried to change the rules of MMORPGs.
