The Mafia video game franchise is often compared to the Grand Theft Auto games. The rivalry began when the first Mafia game came out in 2002, just a year after GTA 3. Fast forward nearly a quarter of a century and, in the run up to the release of last year’s Mafia: The Old Country, GTA reared its head once again. For a time, it looked like The Old Country might end up coming out within the vicinity of the behemoth that is GTA 6. The Old Country’s developers had to explain the point of difference, why those comparisons were unfair, and manage expectations. In the end, Mafia dodged a bullet with GTA 6’s name on it; to have been a fly on the wall when Hangar 13 president Nick Baynes found out Rockstar’s game had been pushed from fall 2025 to May 2026.
But are those comparisons to GTA entirely unfair? And does GTA ever factor into Hangar 13’s decision-making on Mafia? Never, Baynes told me as part of a sweeping oral history of the Mafia franchise.
“I think that genuinely at the studio, we’ve got our own path,” Baynes said. “It genuinely never ever comes up in conversation as a touchpoint or steering our strategy or anything like that. I think obviously there’s a lot of stories about that game out there right now because something’s coming out later this year! But yeah, genuinely, I think it’s an internet thing. It’s not something the studio looks at. So I think I’m afraid there’s not a rich vein of answers to give you for that.”
Baynes is keen to dismiss comparisons to GTA and, specifically, GTA 6 (he won’t even name the game, as if it were the industry equivalent of Lord Voldemort), but the truth is the comparisons continue. You see them pop up every now and then on social media and subreddits. But almost every time, actual fans of the Mafia games will step in to say that Mafia is nothing like GTA. Well, they’re stories about crime and they have guns and cars.
The Mafia games are linear, story-driven affairs that revolve around gritty drama. GTA is a sandbox of mayhem as much as it is about story. Mafia is more Goodfellas, whereas GTA is a parody of Americana. And the scope of each franchise is entirely different. The Mafia games have suffered whenever they’ve tried to go bigger and present a more traditional open world for players to explore. They are, in my view, better off as The Old Country was: within scope, tight, and a fun ride you could complete within a reasonable amount of time. Publisher 2K did well to sell The Old Country for $50 at launch. It is the perfect $50 game.
GTA — and GTA 6 — is not that at all. It is an $80 that some say is actually this generation’s first $100 title because of the content locked behind its more expensive Ultimate Edition. It is a game Rockstar and parent company Take-Two hope will keep fans going for over a decade. Bigger and beyond any reasonable scope seem perfectly reasonable for GTA 6. In fact, they are selling points.
This is something I spoke to Baynes and Mafia: The Old Country game director Alex Cox about last year, and Cox summed up the differences between the two franchises perfectly. “They are different games, and actually more so over time,” he explained. “Certainly if you track both GTA and Mafia since 2000-ish, 2002 when GTA 3 and Mafia came out, they were mechanically very similar games. But Mafia’s always had a bit more focus on its linear narrative versus the sandbox experiences, which Rockstar does industry super best quality. Actually Mafia over time has become increasingly more about the linear story, and so I don’t think the games are fundamentally that similar other than they have a shared theme.”
It sounds to me like Hangar 13 will continue to make Mafia games, based on what Baynes told me during our wider interview (there’s plenty in there I hope Mafia fans will find interesting!). Everything Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick has said about The Old Country suggests he considers it a success. So, Mafia 5 is probably a thing, but this time it will come out with GTA 6 already having been out for maybe a year or two. Some will compare the two, I’m sure. But Mafia and its developers will continue on their own path.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
