Content Leak: The alleged 15-minute gameplay footage of the game showcased to the Deep Silver Creator Collective behind closed doors has been leaked by YouTuberSRDominatrix, which can be seen here.
Creator Killer: The mixed reviewer reception and the universally negative player reception eventually led to Volition — who had already been teetering on the edge after Agents of Mayhem under-performed critically and commercially — closing its doors in 2023, after a year worth of content updates, with the series publisher Deep Silver retaining the rights to the Saints Row franchise. It also doesn't help that they openly insulted longtime fans who were critical of the reboot on twitter.
In Memoriam: To Mike Watson (aka, IdolNinja) and Joe Wells, both longtime team members of Volition, the former being the leader of Saints Row modding community since 2009 known for the development of Gentlemen of the Row mod that adds a lot of new content for Saints Row 2.
Inspiration for the Work: According to some of the developers at Volition, the game takes cues from Baby Driver, John Wick, and Hobbs & Shaw. Some elements from Breaking Bad, such as the ability to run one's own drug smuggling ring disguised as a fast food joint a la Los Pollos Hermanos and the New Old West Southwestern setting, are also borrowed as well.
Milestone Celebration: The game released just a few days (August 23rd, SR1 released August 29th) before the series' 16th anniversary.
Release Date Change: Originally slated for release on February 25th, 2022, the game was pushed up to August 23rd, 2022 partly for quality assurance reasons and partly because of the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Sequel Gap: Reboot as it may be, this mainline game was released almost nine years to the day after Saints Row IV, which was released on August 20th, 2013. If you want to get technical, the very last Saints Row game to release before it was Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell, which released in January 2015.
The reboot's story went through many redrafts. At one point, it was originally going to involve returning characters from the previous games, such as Johnny Gat, Shaundi, Pierce, Aisha and Dex. However, later in production, it was decided that the reboot would feature a completely new cast of characters.
There were originally going to be 12 radio stations, but the final game only featured 10 radio stations.
According to the game files, there were going to be two more Criminal Ventures - a movie studio and a haunted house.
According to an anonymous developer (who worked on the game) that was interviewed by ShortFatOtaku, the feature that allowed players to rob stores from previous Saints Row games, alongside XP and Money drops from killing NPCs, was programmed into the game but they were removed because the DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) group overseeing the game's development requested the features to be removed as they didn't want to upset BLM or encourage killing innocent pedestrians.
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