Christofer Sundberg, founder of Liquid Swords and co-founder of Avalanche Studios, has made it clear he's not trying to compete with Rockstar. The creator of the Just Cause series recently explained where his new open-world crime brawler Samson actually fits in the market, and it's nowhere near Grand Theft Auto territory.
Not a competitor, a companion
The GTA comparisons were inevitable. Samson is an open-world crime game in an urban setting, tracking a street-level criminal climbing the ranks. The team at Liquid Swords has never denied the surface-level similarities. Mission designer Donald Young said earlier this year the comparison is natural for any open-world city game. But Sundberg's positioning goes beyond simple acknowledgment.
"Grand Theft Auto has always been a phenomenon," Sundberg explained. "It competes with everything in entertainment. Every time a GTA game releases, it's just Christmas for everyone. It's like when a new iPhone releases. It's something that so many want, that don't even play videogames."
He's right. GTA V has moved over 200 million copies. The franchise operates in its own stratosphere.
The 90-minute action movie argument
Sundberg's actual pitch for Samson isn't about matching scale. It's about offering something tighter. He compared the game to classic action films, positioning Samson as the option you grab when a massive open-world saga feels like too big an ask.
"There are times when you want to put GTA down and pick up something else," Sundberg said. "I see Samson as being like back in the day when action movies were 90 minutes long, not over two hours. I keep on going back to watching Die Hard and Ronin and First Blood and Rambo. I think there's a space for us there, and that's where I want to end up."
The comparison works even if the exact runtimes don't line up perfectly (Die Hard and Ronin both run past two hours). The core idea is obvious: Samson wants to be focused, direct, and efficient. A crime game you can actually finish without dedicating a quarter of the year to it.
A rougher road to launch
Getting to April 8 hasn't been easy. Samson started as a much larger project, but Liquid Swords cut roughly half its staff in 2025, forcing a major mid-development pivot. Sundberg has said the changes actually helped the game find a clearer identity, even though the process was brutal.
A 2025 gameplay clip drew instant GTA IV comparisons, which Sundberg treated as validation rather than criticism. The team never planned to match Rockstar's scope, which he called "impossible." The goal was always to create something that could exist alongside GTA 6 instead of pretending to challenge it head-on.
What this means for players
With GTA 6 dominating every conversation about open-world crime games, Samson is taking a calculated approach. The genre has space for multiple entries, and a $25 price tag removes most of the hesitation that might stop players from trying something outside the Rockstar ecosystem.
Whether Sundberg's framing of Samson as the Die Hard to Rockstar's Oppenheimer holds up depends entirely on execution. The April 8 launch will settle that fast. Make sure to check out more:
