Rockstar dev's surprise freebie

A former Rockstar Games developer has released a new Steam game with a free demo as Grand Theft Auto VI chatter builds again. (gamingbible.com) The developer is Oren Koren, who worked at Rockstar Games before leaving the company during Grand Theft Auto VI’s development, according to interviews published this week. Koren’s new game, *Don’t Lose Aggro*, launched in Steam Early Access on April 15, 2026. (tech.yahoo.com) (store.steampowered.com) Steam lists *Don’t Lose Aggro* as a single-player action roguelite built around “tanking” — drawing enemy attacks away from allies — and says a free demo is available alongside the paid Early Access release. The store page showed 60 user reviews with an 86% “Very Positive” rating when it was crawled on April 23. (store.steampowered.com 1) (store.steampowered.com 2) Koren told Yahoo’s games desk that he left Rockstar more than two years ago to return to smaller solo projects, after working in design at the company’s Scotland studio. He said the new game grew out of about 20 years of playing massively multiplayer online games, especially in the tank role. (tech.yahoo.com) The timing has put the release into the middle of another Grand Theft Auto VI attention spike. Rockstar’s official site now says the game is set to launch on November 19, 2026, and its dedicated Grand Theft Auto VI page is live with “Trailer 2” and character details for Jason and Lucia. (rockstargames.com 1) (rockstargames.com 2) That matters because Rockstar itself has said little publicly beyond those official updates, leaving fans to track every adjacent move for signals. GamingBible framed Koren’s release as a Rockstar-linked distraction while players wait for the next round of Grand Theft Auto VI marketing. (gamingbible.com) (rockstargames.com) The game itself is much smaller in scope than anything associated with Rockstar. Steam’s Early Access notes say the current build targets at least 10 hours of playtime, with three shields, three talent trees, two companions, three game modes and three handcrafted difficulty levels, plus one endlessly scaling mode. (store.steampowered.com) Koren says he plans to keep the game in Early Access for about 12 months while adding more companions, progression systems and larger party setups. For now, the surprise freebie is not Grand Theft Auto VI news, but it has landed at a moment when almost anything tied to Rockstar draws a crowd. (store.steampowered.com) (gamingbible.com)