Former GTA developer Lazlow Jones thinks real-life believers in its parody of Scientology not only might exist, but once called him to say Kifflom
You remember the Epsilon Program? It’s basically the GTA series’ parody of Scientology and other religions with rather out there beliefs which, at least to the cynic like you or I, can often sound a bit like cults or pyramid schemes. Well, during GTA 5’s development, ex-Rockstar developer and everyone’s favourite in-game radio host Lazlow Jones reckons he recieved a real life phone call from some folks who actually believe in the ways of Kifflom.
This comes from an interview with IGN which largely saw Jones discuss what he’s currently doing with Absurd Ventures, the studio he co-founded with Dan Houser after leaving the studio that’s now starting to near the end of the road to bringing us GTA 6.
Back when he was still at Rockstar and working on GTA 5, Jones says he recieved a phone call from a woman claiming to represent a group of real-life Epsilon Program followers, who told him they were “dying to know more” about the clearly not real religion first developed for GTA San Andreas.
“She was essentially saying that they were worshipers of this fake religion that we had come up with,” recalled the developer, who immediately went and told co-worker Dan Houser about the voicemail left by the group, as you would. “
“She genuinely sounded like she was a follower of the Epsilon Program,” Jones continued, “It’s crazy when you make a satire of something…because we were very straightforward about it. We created a website for the Epsilon Program back in 2004, and all the copy on that, it’s in my mind very clear that it’s a money-grab, modern day fictional religion. But they sounded like proper followers of it.” It excited me and scared me to death simultaneously.
How does it make Jones feel to know that actual people might follow the teachings of the Cris Formage led and light blue-clad gang of sister-brothers who famously greet each other by saying ‘Kifflom!’, whom Michael De Santa can make friends with in between pulling off heists and conducting more hit-and-run killings per day than the average Range Rover driver? “It excited me and scared me to death simultaneously,” he told IGN.
To be fair, given how weird the world is in 2024, is it really that strange to imagine people banding together because they believe the words of video game cult whose central tenets cite as a fact that sperm doesn’t exist and that if you have a birth mark, you may be descended from Kraff, the famous Emperor of the 4th Paradigm?
Do you believe you might be an alien emperor’s spermless descedent? Let us know below! Or, on second thoughts, maybe keep that to yourself.
