A radio host in the GTA was startled by a real-life supporter of the "Epsilon Program," a religion invented for the game

Lazlow Jones, the host of Chatterbox FM in GTA 3 and subsequent games, has plenty of stories from his 19 years with Rockstar. This incident is one of the most remarkable.

In an interview with IGN about his new game development studio, Absurd Ventures, which he co-founded with former Rockstar colleague Dan Houser in 2020, Jones recalled a "strange moment" when a GTA fan took the game a bit too seriously.

GTA enthusiasts are well aware of the "Epsilon Program," a fictional religious cult. Houser and Jones crafted it in classic Rockstar fashion to satirize individuals akin to Scientologists and conspiracy theorists. Rockstar created a website for the Epsilon Program to promote GTA San Andreas back in 2004. This was where the cult debuted, led by the conman Chris Formage. Lazlow Jones even interviews him in the in-game radio show. Over the years, Rockstar has continuously added content related to the Epsilon Program with the release of each GTA title.

It turns out that not everyone grasped the satirical and parody nature of the project. During the development of GTA 5, Jones received a troubling phone call from a "fan." She left a message on his work phone. Upon answering, Jones heard a woman introducing herself as a representative of the Epsilon followers. These were players of GTA who had played through all the games in the series, searching for bits of information about the religion and had formed a real-life group.

"We are dying to know more," the woman said.

Or was she simply a fan wanting to gather more details as part of a collective hunt for glory? Probably not.

"Essentially, she was saying they were supporters of this fake religion we created," Lazlow Jones recounted.

Jones then headed to Dan Houser's office at Rockstar's headquarters in New York to tell him about "this crazy voicemail I received."

"My second thought was that we should just create a fake religion and get very, very rich off the backs of those looking for meaning in life!" Jones joked.

However, the mysterious caller did not alarm Jones or Houser. They doubled the content of the Epsilon Program in GTA 5, creating various quests and videos centered around the false religion. They even wrote a religious book, "Epsilon Tract," and scattered its parts throughout the game world for players to find.

Jones insists that the woman was not just a fan of the game, but truly a supporter of the religion.

"She really spoke as if she were a follower of the Epsilon Program. It's insanity when you create a satire about something... we were very clear about it. We launched the website for Epsilon Program back in 2004, and its concept, in my opinion, is quite evident — it's a modern fictional religion that extracts money. But she spoke like a genuine follower of it. It thrilled me and terrified me at the same time."

Wesley Yin-Poole from IGN took Jones's claims with skepticism and searched online for traces of fans of the fictional GTA religion. There were a few joking messages from people pretending to be Epsilonists, but very little evidence of a cult's following, at least in 2024.

Source: IGN