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Rockstar Games UK Limited
Rockstar North
Formerly
  • DMA Design Limited (1988–2002)
  • Rockstar Studios Limited (2002)
  • Rockstar North Limited (2002–2021)
Company typeSubsidiary
IndustryVideo games
Founded1988; 36 years ago (1988) in Dundee, Scotland
FounderDavid Jones
Headquarters
Edinburgh
,
Scotland
Key people
Andrew Semple (studio director)
Products
Number of employees
650 (2018)
Parent
Websiterockstarnorth.com

Rockstar North (Rockstar Games UK Limited; formerly DMA Design Limited and Rockstar North Limited) is a British video game developer and a studio of Rockstar Games based in Edinburgh. The studio is best known for creating the Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto series, including Grand Theft Auto V, the second-best-selling game and most profitable entertainment product of all time.

David Jones founded the company as DMA Design in 1988 in his hometown of Dundee. During his studies, he had developed the game Menace and struck a six-game publishing deal with Psygnosis, which released Menace in October 1988. While making its sequel, Blood Money, Jones dropped out, hired several of his friends—including Mike Dailly, Steve Hammond, and Russell Kay, whom he had met at the Kingsway Amateur Computer Club—and opened the company's first offices above a former fish and chip shop in 1989. Following the successful 1991 release of Lemmings, the studio rapidly expanded and moved into proper offices, after which Kay left to establish Visual Sciences. Several Lemmings expansions and sequels later, 1994's All New World of Lemmings was DMA Design's final game in the series and its last with Psygnosis.

Starting in 1994, DMA Design partnered with Nintendo and BMG Interactive for several projects, many of which stalled or were cancelled. Jones sold the financially stricken studio to Gremlin Interactive in April 1997, which also led to the spin-off of DMA Design's satellite studio in Boulder, Colorado, and Hammond's departure. After BMG Interactive released DMA Design's Grand Theft Auto in November 1997 to commercial success, Take-Two Interactive bought the publisher and the game's intellectual property to form Rockstar Games in December 1998. At the same time, Body Harvest's underperformance led Infogrames to purchase Gremlin Interactive, with DMA Design sold to Take-Two in September 1999. The studio was aligned with Rockstar Games, which soon released Grand Theft Auto 2. Amid these changes, Dailly left for Visual Sciences, while Jones founded Denki and Real Time Worlds.

A few months after an Edinburgh branch was established for DMA Design, the prior Dundee location was closed. Grand Theft Auto III, the first Grand Theft Auto game presented fully in 3D, was released in 2001 and sold 6 million units in one year. Considered genre-defining, the game gave rise to a number of Grand Theft Auto clones. Take-Two integrated DMA Design with Rockstar Games as Rockstar Studios in March 2002, which was renamed Rockstar North in May. Since then, the studio has continued the Grand Theft Auto series with Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002), Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004), Grand Theft Auto IV (2008), and Grand Theft Auto V (2013), as well as a number of smaller games in the franchise. Rockstar North also created Manhunt in 2003 and collaborated with other Rockstar Games studios on Manhunt 2 (2007), Red Dead Redemption (2010), L.A. Noire (2011), Max Payne 3 (2012), and Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018).

History

[edit]

Background and formation (1983–1988)

[edit]
Among the core members of the early DMA Design team were (from left to right) Russell Kay, Mike Dailly, Steve Hammond, Gary Timmons, and David Jones (pictured in 2011).[1][2]

Having frequently played Space Invaders in his youth, the Dundee native David Jones gained early programming knowledge when his secondary school, Linlathen High, obtained an Apple II computer and piloted O-level qualifications in computer studies.[3][4] In 1983, after leaving school, he took up an apprenticeship at the local plant of the electronics manufacturer Timex. Although the company was best known for producing watches, the Dundee factory also built home computers for Sinclair Research, including the ZX81 and ZX Spectrum, which had boosted interest in hobbyist programming in the area.[3][5] Timex employees could buy subsidised ZX Spectrum units, and the company paid for programming courses at the local Kingsway Technical College.[3][4][6]

The college also hosted the Kingsway Amateur Computer Club (KACC), where attendees—including Timex employees and local youths—had to bring their computers, usually ZX Spectrum machines.[3][6] Jones was the oldest member at the KACC, where he soon befriended Steve Hammond and Russell Kay.[3] Mike Dailly joined the club at the recommendation of a friend in 1984 with the Commodore Plus/4 he had received for Christmas. He was the youngest attendee at 14 years old.[3][7] The quartet bonded over their shared interest in creating games instead of playing or copying existing ones.[3][4] During their time at the KACC, Dailly and Hammond developed Freek Out for the Commodore Plus/4, which they finished and sold to the publisher Cascade for "a modest fee", while Jones and Kay cooperated on Moonshadow for the ZX Spectrum, which was eventually released as Zone Trooper.[3][6] Jones and Dailly also worked on The Game With No Name.[6]

As Sinclair Research's market share dropped significantly during 1986, the Dundee Timex plant enacted layoffs.[3] Jones accepted a voluntary redundancy for £3,000, a roughly half-year salary that he invested into an Amiga 1000, and subsequently enrolled in computer science at the Dundee Institute of Technology (DIT).[6][8] Hammond also attended the DIT, and all four soon joined its computer club.[9] Because Jones easily passed the course's first year, he had much time to learn to programme for the Amiga and spent one year creating the shoot 'em up CopperCon1.[3] Working out of his parents' bedroom, he provisionally used the monicker "Acme".[6] The game featured graphics by the demoscene member Tony Smith, with whom he communicated by post, and sounds Dailly and Hammond recorded from a Salamander machine at a local arcade.[3][10] At the Personal Computer World Show trade event, Jones met with representatives of several publishers—including Gremlin Graphics, Hewson Consultants, Ocean Software, and the nascent Psygnosis—to demonstrate CopperCon1.[3] While all reacted positively, Hewson Consultants and its Andrew Braybrook were the most enthusiastic about the game and quickly agreed to publish it. However, after it was showcased in the Popular Computing Weekly magazine with the title Zynaps, Jones wanted to avoid his game only becoming the Amiga version of the ZX Spectrum game and walked away from the agreement.[2][3]

Instead, he turned to Psygnosis, visiting its Liverpool offices in 1987 and agreeing to a six-game publishing deal.[2][3] CopperCon1 was renamed Draconia, which was ultimately changed to Menace because the name was too similar to Draconus.[3][11] Jones also agreed to bring Psygnosis's Ballistix from the Amiga to the Commodore 64, for which he engaged Dailly and Hammond.[9][12] In his search for a company name to replace the already taken "Acme", Jones discussed alternatives with the members of the DIT's computer club in 1988.[2][6][9] Among others, "Milliard", "Visual Voyage", and "Alias Smith and Jones" (in reference to Menace's artist) were floated, and Jones finally settled on "DMA Design".[2][3] The abbreviation "DMA" stood for "direct memory access" in Amiga manuals but carried no meaning in the company name.[13] While "Direct Mind Access" was official briefly, Jones eventually began stating that the abbreviation was short for "Doesn't Mean Anything".[2][3][9] He formally founded DMA Design in 1988, when he was 22 years old.[14][15][16][17]

Initial games with Psygnosis and Lemmings (1988–1994)

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DMA Design inaugurated its first offices on 134B Nethergate in Dundee (top; pictured in 2005) in August 1989.[12][18] A plaque commemorating the twentieth anniversary of Lemmings was installed in February 2011.[19]

Menace was released in October 1988 after 18 months of development.[20][21] It was DMA Design's debut game and the first game under Psygnosis's Psyclapse label for budget-priced games.[3] Although Jones only received £0.75 for every copy sold, which he retrospectively viewed as a "terrible" deal, the 20,000 sales allowed him to buy a Vauxhall Astra car and regularly visit the Psygnosis offices to meet other game developers.[3][6] While working on a sequel to Menace, the difficulty of Jones's university programme spiked, leading him to drop out and pursue game development full-time, against the advice of his professors.[3][22] He intended to return after one year but never finished his studies, eventually receiving an honorary degree.[13][17] Jones soon began hiring his friends: Dailly, who had just been expelled from college, became the first employee in 1989 and began working on a Commodore 64 conversion of Menace.[2][3][6] Hammond joined second on a part-time basis as he continued his education, followed shortly by Kay and Brian Watson, one of Jones's university friends.[2][6] The Menace sequel, Blood Money, was released in April 1989.[23] It sold 40,000 copies.[2][3] Gary Timmons joined the studio shortly after the game was completed, while Dailly developed its Commodore 64 version and began working on a PC Engine port of Shadow of the Beast for Psygnosis.[2][12] DMA Design also made Shadow of the Beast's Commodore 64 port and the PC Engine and MS-DOS versions for Ballistix.[2][21]

Jones's father-in-law, the owner of the Dundee fish and chip shop The Deep Sea, lent him a small office space above the shop's former location at 134B Nethergate in Dundee.[18][24] The infill building, built in 1893, is sometimes called the Wee Pink Nethergate House.[18] When DMA Design inaugurated its office there on 1 August 1989, the ground floor housed Gooseberry Bush, a children's clothing store.[18][24] The studio continued to expand, also hiring many students to work part-time.[3][25] In 1990, DMA Design cancelled several projects: The Golden Axe-inspired Gore! was shelved due to technical restrictions of the Amiga at the time and the platformer Cutiepoo did not make adequate progress after one year of work by the freelance programmer Tony Colgan.[2][26] Jones further put aside his game Walker as he found he could not achieve his vision for it and stopped working on the Monster Cartridge, a cheat cartridge for the Amiga, after another such product was released first.[2]

The programmer Ian Dunlop and artist Neill Glancy, working remotely from Edinburgh on a contract basis, were soon made to experiment with Walker.[3][27] While they needed an artist to create characters just sixteen pixels tall, which Scott Johnston took on, Dailly believed the sprites could be smaller and challenged himself to create eight-pixel-high characters.[3] He spent a lunch break hour building a showcase animation of such characters walking in a line and being killed comically, to the amusement of the office. Kay remarked that a game could be created from this. Jones concurred and thought of a design in which the player should prevent the characters from being killed.[3][7] Kay wrote a demo before it was passed on to Dailly and later to Jones, who worked out the gameplay foundations with Timmons.[12] The game was named Lemmings upon Kay's suggestion and released in February 1991.[3][24] It sold 55,000 copies on its first day and was swiftly brought to other regions and platforms.[3][6] Jon Dye, another former KACC attendee, was hired later that year to bring the game to the ZX Spectrum.[28]

Lemmings had 20 million lifetime sales across 21 platforms.[6][29] At 25 years old, Jones became a millionaire and subsequently bought two Ferrari luxury cars.[8][13] The company rapidly expanded and began working on several additional projects.[3] As Psygnosis sought DMA Design to produce Lemmings expansion packs and sequels in the wake of this success, the studio developed Oh No! More Lemmings (1991), Lemmings 2: The Tribes (1993), and All New World of Lemmings (1994).[2] It also made the Christmas-themed Holiday Lemmings to be distributed for free on covermounts in 1991 and 1992, before Psygnosis made it a commercial release for 1993 and 1994.[30][31]

By November 1992, DMA Design had grown to 22 staff, of which 10 were former classmates of Jones, and relocated to proper offices at the Dundee Technology Park.[17] As Kay left DMA Design in 1993 to form Visual Sciences, Jones and Dailly hired Keith Hamilton as a replacement and put him in charge of All New World of Lemmings. This entry focused on larger, more detailed lemmings, which Hamilton and Jones later believed diminished the game's charm.[32] In the same year, Psygnosis released Walker, which remained exclusive to the Amiga, and Hired Guns, which had been created principally by Johnston with a story by Hammond.[33][34] All New World of Lemmings was the final game in Jones's original deal with Psygnosis and, with fatigue for Lemmings at the studio, Psygnosis hired other developers for subsequent entries.[2][32] Among them, Kay and Visual Sciences made Lemmings Paintball.[30]

Partnerships with Nintendo and BMG Interactive (1994–1997)

[edit]

After leaving Lemmings behind, DMA Design began researching development for the 3DO.[29] In another project, Psygnosis briefly had DMA Design emulate an in-development Star Wars game on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES).[35] During one trade show, Jones caught the attention of Nintendo with a full-motion video Star Wars clip running on the SNES, something previously believed impossible.[33][36] At the time, the company was seeking development partners for its upcoming Nintendo 64 console, which was then called Project Reality.[32][36] DMA Design signed a two-game contract—worth several million pounds—and joined Nintendo's "Dream Team" of external partners.[36][37] When this partnership was announced in April 1994, DMA Design was only Nintendo's second partner for the platform.[33][38] Using these funds, the studio grew to occupy 2,500 square feet (230 m2) of office space at the Dundee Technology Park and spent around £250,000 outfitting all rooms with high-end devices.[37] The partnership also led DMA Design to cease developing for the 3DO.[29][33] The studio steered clear of other consoles, like the PlayStation and Sega Saturn, because Jones disliked "multiformat publishing for the sake of it".[29]

DMA Design's first project for Nintendo was Unirally, a racing game featuring animated unicycles created using 2D sprites rendered from a 3D model.[39] Following the game's 1994 release for the SNES, the animation studio Pixar sued Nintendo over perceived similarities between the game's characters and the unicycle protagonist from Pixar's 1987 animated short film Red's Dream.[13][39] The judge ruled in Pixar's favour and the two companies agreed that Nintendo would cease the production of Unirally copies while Pixar was to receive a Nintendo 64 game development kit.[12][39] Despite the ruling, the game sold 300,000 copies.[39] DMA Design continued working with Nintendo on Kid Kirby, a spin-off in Nintendo's Kirby franchise made by Colgan after requesting a second chance from Jones.[2] The game featured a young version of the title character, who would have been launched around levels using the Super NES Mouse.[40] In November 1994, a team of five people commenced developing Body Harvest, scheduled to be a launch title for the Nintendo 64.[33][36]

In the meantime, Dailly was experimenting with ways to render 3D buildings from a top-down perspective. To showcase this technology, he devised a game that saw the player control a dinosaur and destroy the city. After adding cars to make the scene more lively, a colleague suggested having the player drive these cars instead.[41] Jones took notice of Dailly's project and passed it to a team that should turn it into a game.[12] The Liaison and Promotion Company, which had taken on marketing for DMA Design and its games in July 1993, presented the studio with potential partners for the project.[42] Jones consequently presented a prototype of the game, which became known as Race'n'Chase, to BMG Interactive, the recently formed games arm of Bertelsmann.[32][37] The two companies signed a £3.4 million contract in March 1995, wherein the studio would develop four games for the publisher.[42][43] According to The Liaison and Promotion Company, Jones had not informed the firm of the impending deal, instead claiming he would partner with another company. such as Virgin Interactive Entertainment. DMA Design and The Liaison and Promotion Company then severed ties just before the deal with BMG Interactive was finalised, such that DMA Design refused to pay the marketing firm its share of the deal.[42]

The publishing agreement covered Race'n'Chase, Space Station Silicon Valley, Tanktics, and Covert, the latter a stealth game in the style of Metal Gear.[36] With the acquired funds, DMA Design intended to expand its offices and increase its 40-strong headcount with 42 additional hires, quickly growing to 130 people.[32][43] The company took over an additional 5,000 square feet (460 m2) of office space and expanded to two adjacent buildings, therein also setting up a £500,000 motion capture studio that found little usage.[44][45] Another section housed DMA Music with seven full-time musicians.[29] Race'n'Chase formally entered into production in March 1995.[46][47] The development team consisted mostly of recent graduates with little development experience, with Hamilton as the lead programmer.[32] As such, the team was highly unorganised and struggled with the development until Gary Penn moved from BMG Interactive to DMA Design as the game's creative director and producer.[46][48] BMG Interactive's production team, including the head of development Sam Houser, was hands-off during the development.[32][46]

Body Harvest progressed slowly and faced numerous delays, such that it missed its intended launch with the Nintendo 64.[2][36] Kid Kirby and the climbing-themed action game Zenith also stalled, and Nintendo cancelled the former following the low sales of the Super NES Mouse.[2][36] Furthermore, the American division of BMG Interactive regularly pushed for Race'n'Chase to be cancelled because the team kept missing development milestones.[32][48] The game was never the sole focus of the studio, and several staffers believed Body Harvest would be a bigger hit.[46] With DMA Design struggling financially, Jones kept agreeing to game projects solely to receive sign-on bonuses and with no plans to complete them. At one point, the studio had seven or eight projects in development at the same time.[36] In the latter half of 1996, GT Interactive signed with DMA Design for Attack! and Clan Wars, despite neither draft having a proper team assigned.[36] Jones also sold the rights to Grand Theft Auto to BMG Interactive to help keep the studio afloat.[32] In November 1996, DMA Design opened a satellite studio in Boulder, Colorado.[49] Anthony Harman was installed as the studio's manager, and it had 27 employees by April 1997.[50]

Sale to Gremlin Interactive (1997)

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Games will always be here. ... If you do good games, they'll always sell well. What I like is that people are not daft anymore. ... There was a time when you could sell anything in this business. Anything. That was more disappointing – when the business was bigger it was because of that. Times are hard now, making people focus more on quality and innovation which is great.

David Jones, founder of DMA Design, 1997[29]

The development on Body Harvest was torn between differing demands from Nintendo and its American branch.[33][36] The team sought to keep up its relationship with Nintendo and caved in to these demands. Despite stark changes to the game's design, Nintendo was dissatisfied with the result and cancelled the game.[36] Still in financial disarray and wanting his company to focus on game development,[32][36] Jones arranged for Gremlin Graphics (since renamed Gremlin Interactive) to acquire DMA Design for £4.2 million in April 1997.[14][51] The publisher was impressed with DMA Design's multi-use 3DMA game engine and wanted the two companies to cooperate on research and development.[2] It also expected DMA Design to become profitable within two years of the acquisition.[52] Gremlin Interactive introduced several project management methods—including Microsoft Project and Gantt charts—that the studio perceived as unnecessary bureaucracy. Additionally, the company required that DMA Design began finishing games as quickly as possible, as opposed to Jones's prior methodology of releasing a game only once it is good.[36] Jones received a 5% stake in Gremlin Interactive and became a member of its board of directors.[22][53] He subsequently moved into the creative director role for DMA Design.[2] In May, the studio had 100 employees.[22]

DMA Design's satellite studio in Boulder, Colorado, was based near the Devil's Thumb rock formation it was later named after (pictured in 1996).

As another result of the acquisition, the Boulder studio was spun off.[1][54] Under Harman's continued leadership, it was renamed Devil's Thumb Entertainment.[55][56] At the time, the studio was developing a remake of Hired Guns for Psygnosis with Hammond as the writer. Being more passionate about this project than Grand Theft Auto, he left DMA Design to work on the remake in a freelance position, which he later said he regretted "ever since".[1][54] The Hired Guns remake was announced in 1998 as using Unreal Engine and targeting the Nintendo 64.[55][57] Devil's Thumb Entertainment also developed Mike Piazza's StrikeZone and Tides of War for GT Interactive.[57] In March 1999, the studio was acquired and absorbed by the developer VR-1, also based in Boulder.[58][59] The Hired Guns remake was never released.[60]

Two months after DMA Design's acquisition, Gremlin Interactive became a public company on the London Stock Exchange.[14][61] Jones's stake in the company was valued at £55 million at the time.[22] Meanwhile, Bertelsmann had decided to withdraw from the video game industry and shut down the American division of BMG Interactive. In its place, the release in North America was licensed to ASC Games.[32] Gremlin Interactive also picked up the rights to Body Harvest and engaged Midway Home Entertainment as the publisher in North America.[2][62] For Tanktics, the North American publishing rights were sold to Interplay Entertainment.[63] DMA Design further negotiated back the rights to Attack! and Clan Wars from GT Interactive.[64]

In July 1997, Lord Penrose at the Court of Session presided over The Liaison and Promotion Company's £1.5 million lawsuit against DMA Design over breach of contract in relation to the deal with BMG Interactive. The judge opined that the marketing firm had been pivotal in the deal being reached and that DMA Design had taken a "rather cynical action" by excluding it from the negotiations. He therefore asserted that the actions did constitute breach of contract, although the damages were to be assessed in another hearing.[42] Also in 1997, DMA Design was one of the founding members of the Scottish Game Alliance, alongside Creative Edge, Digital Animations, Inner Workings, Red Lemon Studios, VIS Interactive, and Visual Sciences.[65] In academics, Jones helped the Dundee Institute of Technology (now called the University of Abertay Dundee) to establish the world-first computer games degree in November 1997, and DMA Design developed games for a game design course at Dundee College in 1998.[1][66]

Sale to Take-Two Interactive (1997–2000)

[edit]

In the lead-up to the debut of Race'n'Chase, now renamed Grand Theft Auto, BMG Interactive hired the publicist Max Clifford, who set out to market the game by having it garner negative publicity. Baron Campbell of Croy warned of the game at the United Kingdom's House of Lords in May 1997, and several tabloid newspapers called for it to be banned in the country.[32] Grand Theft Auto was released in November 1997 and, despite mixed reviews, quickly sold 500,000 units and generated £25 million.[67] Visual Sciences developed the PlayStation port for Grand Theft Auto, which was largely programmed by Kay and produced by Houser.[1][32][68] The success diminished the focus on other games, particularly Space Station Silicon Valley, and a sequel was soon greenlit.[69][70] Bertelsmann considered BMG Interactive's operations too expensive and decided to ramp down the division entirely. At the same time, Ryan Brant was looking to grow the publishing business of his company, Take-Two Interactive. After coming across BMG Interactive, Houser pitched his vision for game development to Brant.[69] As a result, Take-Two acquired BMG Interactive, since dormant, for 1.85 million shares worth US$14.2 million in March 1998.[69][71] Through the acquisition, Take-Two also obtained the intellectual property of Grand Theft Auto and Space Station Silicon Valley, and it published the former's PlayStation version in North America later that year.[32][71]

Houser subsequently moved over to Take-Two as its "vice president of worldwide product development", in charge of internal and external development studios.[69] The company also incrementally purchased all individual publishing rights for Grand Theft Auto from other companies to hold the exclusive rights to the game worldwide.[46] Body Harvest and Space Station Silicon Valley were released in late 1998 but were scarcely marketed, leading to meagre sales.[36] Houser and some of his former BMG Interactive colleagues formed Rockstar Games as a publishing label for Take-Two in December 1998.[46] The newborn company commissioned its internal studio, Rockstar Canada, to develop two expansions for the original game, Grand Theft Auto: London 1969 and Grand Theft Auto: London 1961, which were released in 1999.[46]

In March 1999, after less than two years on the stock market, the poor sales of Body Harvest contributed to dire financials at Gremlin Interactive that forced it into a £24 million takeover by the French publisher Infogrames.[14][72] During this year, Dailly left the company to join Kay at Visual Sciences as its head of research and development.[1][12] Under the new ownership, Gremlin Interactive published DMA Design's Wild Metal Country in May and Tanktics in June.[73][74] As Infogrames was more conservative and sought to produce child-friendly games, it did not wish to hold on to any assets related to Grand Theft Auto.[5][32] Take-Two Interactive bought DMA Design from the publisher in September 1999 for the nominal price of £1 while assuming US$12.3 million in debt.[14][75] The acquisition was announced on 29 September and DMA Design was aligned with Rockstar Games, which Houser described as a "perfect match".[76] During these ownership and managerial changes, several projects were cancelled, including Attack!, Grand Theft Auto and Wild Metal Country for the Nintendo 64, and an Unreal version for the 64DD.[2] At the time of Take-Two's acquisition, DMA Design was working on GTA 3D and Grand Theft Auto: Online Crime World.[77][78]

Grand Theft Auto 2, published by Rockstar Games, was released in October 1999 and quickly sold more than 1 million copies, the first Take-Two game to do so.[79][80] Shortly thereafter, DMA Design established a satellite studio in the Leith area of Edinburgh to house the former teams of Body Harvest and Space Station Silicon Valley.[46][81] Among those who relocated there were Leslie Benzies, Aaron Garbut, and Obbe Vermeij, all of whom had worked on Space Station Silicon Valley.[32][36] Under the direction of Andrew Semple, the branch launched with 25 people.[82] While the Edinburgh location continued to develop a 3D Grand Theft Auto game, now modelled after Driver, the Dundee office was working on an expansion for Grand Theft Auto 2 set in Miami, of which the former was ultimately prioritised and became Grand Theft Auto III.[32] Jones was the last member of the original DMA Design team to work on this game.[2] However, unhappy with his studio being owned by an overseas company and failing to see eye-to-eye with Take-Two, he departed the company in early 2000.[2][32] With three other DMA Design employees, he formed Denki and, in February, Rage Software hired him to lead its new Scotland operations.[83][84] Jones bought out these operations in 2002 to form Real Time Worlds, which went on to hire many former DMA Design staffers.[2][10]

Rockstar Games released a Dreamcast port of Wild Metal Country, renamed Wild Metal, in February 2000.[85] Under Take-Two, DMA Design ceased creating several games at once and was instead made to focus on only few large projects at a time. Many staffers felt at odds with this shift, as it diminished the prior atmosphere they felt was driven by creativity.[46] The publisher closed the Dundee studio in March 2000, relocating many of the 35 staffers to Edinburgh and laying off the rest.[32][86] The move was intended to be part of a merger between DMA Design, Rockstar Games, and the Tel Aviv-based Pixel Broadband Studios, which Take-Two was acquiring at the time, under the combined brand of "Broadband Studios".[86][87] Pixel Broadband Studios was developing online-focused game technology, such that the combined Broadband Studios would have increasingly focused on this market.[88][89] However, the merger was quickly cancelled and DMA Design was instead integrated more closely with Rockstar Games.[87] Jim Woods, who had become the DMA Design's managing director by this time, resigned as he wished to stay in Dundee.[86]

Grand Theft Auto trilogy and rebranding as Rockstar North (2000–2004)

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The "DMA Man" was DMA Design's longest-running logo. Designed by Stuart Graham, it was adopted in 1994 after winning an internal design competition and replaced in 2001 for the release of Grand Theft Auto III.[90]

During the development of Grand Theft Auto III, DMA Design again expanded rapidly, forming a core team of 20 people for the game and engaging "dozens more" in some capacity.[91] The total team encompassed 60 people.[92] The team retained the focus on a mostly unconstrained open world from the prior two games while introducing fully 3D graphics and a third-person view.[91][93][94] With much of the game planned out from the start, the development progressed smoothly. Upon its release for the PlayStation 2 in late 2001, it became the best-selling game of that year, as well as the second-best in 2002.[91] The game sold 6 million copies within one year and more than 15 million in total, exceeding the development team's expectations.[94] Grand Theft Auto III's approach to 3D open worlds has been referred to as genre-defining and inspired a number of successful titles, also spawning the category of Grand Theft Auto clones, which includes The Simpsons: Hit & Run, True Crime: Streets of LA, Driver 3, and Saints Row.[93][95]

Plans to outfit Grand Theft Auto III with an online multiplayer component were scrapped in favour of a follow up, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.[91] Rockstar Games initially sought the studio to produce an expansion pack for Grand Theft Auto III before its expanding scope led it to be considered a standalone product. Vice City reused its predecessor's engine, such that the programmers were not engaged until six months before the end of the production, and lessons learned from the previous development cycle allowed the designers to plan features more efficiently. In the meantime, the programmers worked on bringing Grand Theft Auto III to personal computers.[94] In March 2002, DMA Design was renamed Rockstar Studios, which Houser described as the studio's "final integration" with Rockstar Games.[96][97] The name was revised to Rockstar North in May.[98] Vice City was completed in one year and released in late 2002.[94] For its work on the game, Rockstar North won the "best in-house development studio" and "creativity" awards at the first Develop Industry Excellence Awards in August 2003.[99]

Following Vice City's release, Rockstar North began work on Z, a zombie survival game set on a Scottish island. The game repurposed code from Vice City and was in production for around one month before the concept lost traction at the studio.[100][101] The studio's Manhunt, a stealth game, was released in 2003 after roughly three years in development.[102] Due to its dark tone and focus on realistic violence, it was handled as the studio's pet project as most people at Rockstar Games wanted no part in it.[103] Rockstar North assisted Rockstar Vienna and later Rockstar London in the production of a sequel, Manhunt 2, which entered into production in January 2004.[104][105]

Rockstar North's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was given one year of additional development time over Vice City, which allowed the team to rework core parts of the gameplay and visuals.[106] It had a budget of less than $10 million.[107] By the end of the game's production, Rockstar North had relocated to offices on Calton Square in Edinburgh.[81][108] San Andreas was released in October 2004 and, within four days, sold 2.1 million copies, 45% above Vice City's sales in the same time span, and generated $101 million.[109] Alongside several other year-end accolades, San Andreas was named the "game of the year" at the 2004 Spike Video Game Awards and 2005 Golden Joystick Awards.[110][111] Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City, and San Andreas were bundled as Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy in 2006.[112] By 2008, they had attained sales of 14.5 million, 17.5 million, and 21.5 million, respectively.[113]

Grand Theft Auto IV, Grand Theft Auto V, and development collaborations (2004–2013)

[edit]

After San Andreas, Rockstar North began producing Grand Theft Auto IV. At the same time, the studio commenced the production of a stealth game called Agent (codenamed Jimmy in reference to James Bond). A game with the same name and concept had previously been cancelled at the sister studio Rockstar San Diego, and Benzies was interested in furthering the idea. The studio was split evenly between the two projects, although Grand Theft Auto IV was soon prioritised over Agent. The game was still announced in 2009 as an exclusive title for the PlayStation 3 but was never released. Its trademark was abandoned in 2018, and the listing was removed from Rockstar Games's website in 2021.[100][101] Rockstar North worked closely with Rockstar Leeds on three Grand Theft Auto games for handheld game consoles: Liberty City Stories, Vice City Stories, and Chinatown Wars.[114][115][116]

Grand Theft Auto IV's production encompassed 220 people at the studio and 1,000. Benzies estimated the budget at $100 million.[117] Upon its April 2008 release, the game broke the record for the highest revenue for a game within one day at 3.6 million copies, generating $310 million.[118] At the 2008 Spike Video Game Awards, the game won "game of the year" and earned Rockstar North a nomination for "best studio".[119][120] The studio followed the game up with two expansion packs—The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony —which were later bundled as Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City.[121] In the meantime, the studio contributed to Rockstar San Diego's Red Dead Redemption in 2010 and Team Bondi's L.A. Noire in 2011.[122] For Max Payne 3 in 2012, Rockstar North assisted a number of other Rockstar Games studios collectively credited as "Rockstar Studios".[123]

Immediately following the completion of Grand Theft Auto IV, Rockstar North began preliminary work on Grand Theft Auto V.[124] Rockstar North's 360 employees formed the core of a more than 1,000-strong team worldwide, including several other Rockstar Games studios.[82] The core development took roughly three years, and the game was released in September 2013.[124] The game broke the records for the best-selling and highest-grossing video game within one day and the fastest entertainment property to reach $1 billion in revenue at three days.[125][126] With continuing sales and the success of its online multiplayer counterpart, Grand Theft Auto Online, the game grossed an estimated $6 billion by 2018, making it the most profitable entertainment product of all time.[127] Its 200 million copies sold as of March 2024 make it the second-best-selling game ever and contribute to the more than 425 million total sales of the series.[128][129]

Continued expansion and departure of Leslie Benzies (2014–present)

[edit]
From 2004 to 2014, Rockstar North occupied offices at Calton Square, 1 Greenside Row, Edinburgh; at the foot of Calton Hill.[81][108]

In 2014, Rockstar North took over 75,000 square feet (7,000 m2) of office space in Barclay House on Holyrood Road in Edinburgh. The studio replaced as tenants the newspaper group The Scotsman, for which the building had been built in 1999.[130] In the same year, the studio began receiving tax credits from the newly established Video Games Tax Relief scheme set up by the government of the United Kingdom. According to the investigative think tank TaxWatch UK, the studio received £80 million by 2020, 37% of the scheme's total payout of which £37.6 million in 2019 alone, while having not paid any corporation tax since 2009.[131][132] In response, Rockstar Games stated that the tax credits had enabled higher investments into the country, while The Association for UK Interactive Entertainment reported that the scheme had brought about a fourfold return on investment.[132] Benzies, until then the studio head, went on a sabbatical in September 2014. He did not return and was announced as having left Rockstar North in January 2016. Garbut and Rob Nelson, both art directors for the studio, took over his responsibilities.[133]

Benzies sued Rockstar Games, Take-Two, Sam Houser, and Dan Houser on 12 April 2016, claiming that the companies had withheld $150 million in royalty payments following his departure.[134][135] In the suit, he claimed that the Houser brothers had persuaded him to take a six-month sabbatical and fired his son and several friends during this absence.[136] As Benzies tried to return after the planned end of his sabbatical in April 2015, his building access had been disabled and the office manager ordered him off the premises.[134] The lawsuit stated that the three "Rockstar Principals"—himself and the Houser brothers—had established a shell corporation to evenly share profits and eventually leave Take-Two. Additionally, Benzies accused Sam Houser of having built a sexually charged culture and ineptly handling the development of Red Dead Redemption.[134] Take-Two quickly filed a counterclaim and described Benzies's claims as "entirely without merit and in many instances downright bizarre".[136][137] The claim asserted that, because Benzies had departed Rockstar North without a good cause, he was not entitled to any additional compensation.[134] The New York Supreme Court partially dismissed Benzies's lawsuit in April 2018 because the profit-sharing agreement did not guarantee equal pay for the Rockstar Principals, although he remained entitled to some royalties.[138] Take-Two later accused Benzies of poaching employees from Rockstar North for his newer studio, Royal Circus Games, and argued that the company's name and trademark had been deliberately chosen to have consumers confuse the two entities.[139][140] Royal Circus Games was renamed Build a Rocket Boy in October 2018 and, following a confidential settlement, the case was dismissed on 8 February 2019.[140][141]

For Red Dead Redemption 2, all Rockstar Games studios pooled their resources to act as one team.[142] Rockstar North had grown to 650 employees by the time of the game's October 2018 release.[143] In July 2021, Rockstar North bought Barclay House, where it had become the sole tenant, for £31 million and the adjacent Holyrood Park House, which it had since occupied parts of, for £18.25 million.[144][145] During 2022, the studio grew to occupy an additional 11,577 square feet (1,075.5 m2) of office space in the latter.[146]

Games developed

[edit]

As DMA Design

[edit]
List of games developed by Rockstar North, 1988–2002
Year Title Platform(s) Publisher(s) Notes Ref.
1988 Menace Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, MS-DOS Psygnosis [2]
1989 Ballistix Commodore 64, MS-DOS, PC Engine Port development
Blood Money Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS, Commodore 64
Shadow of the Beast Commodore 64, PC Engine Port development
1991 Lemmings 3DO, Acorn Archimedes, Amiga, Amiga CD32, Amstrad CPC, Atari Lynx, Atari ST, CD-i, CDTV, Commodore 64, FM Towns, Game Boy, Game Gear, J2ME, Mac OS, Master System, Mega Drive, MS-DOS, Nintendo Entertainment System, PC-98, PC Engine, SAM Coupé, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, X68000, ZX Spectrum
Oh No! More Lemmings Acorn Archimedes, Amiga, Atari ST, Mac OS, MS-DOS, SAM Coupé
1993 Walker Amiga
Lemmings 2: The Tribes Acorn Archimedes, Amiga, Atari ST, FM Towns, Game Boy, Mega Drive, MS-DOS, Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Hired Guns Amiga, MS-DOS
Holiday Lemmings 1993 Amiga, Mac OS, MS-DOS
1994 All New World of Lemmings Amiga, MS-DOS
Holiday Lemmings 1994 Amiga, MS-DOS
Unirally Super Nintendo Entertainment System Nintendo
1997 Grand Theft Auto MS-DOS, PlayStation, Windows BMG Interactive, ASC Games, Take-Two Interactive
1998 Body Harvest Nintendo 64 Gremlin Interactive, Midway Home Entertainment
Space Station Silicon Valley Nintendo 64, PlayStation Take-Two Interactive
1999 Tanktics Windows Gremlin Interactive, Interplay Entertainment
Wild Metal Country Dreamcast, Windows Gremlin Interactive, Rockstar Games
Grand Theft Auto 2 Dreamcast, PlayStation, Windows Rockstar Games
2001 Grand Theft Auto III Android, Fire OS, iOS, macOS, PlayStation 2, Windows, Xbox

As Rockstar North

[edit]
List of games developed by Rockstar North, 2002–present
Year Title Platform(s) Publisher(s) Notes Ref.
2002 Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Android, Fire OS, iOS, macOS, PlayStation 2, Windows, Xbox Rockstar Games [94]
2003 Manhunt PlayStation 2, Windows, Xbox [102]
2004 Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Android, Fire OS, iOS, macOS, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Windows, Windows Phone, Xbox, Xbox 360 [106]
2005 Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories Android, Fire OS, iOS, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable Co-developed with Rockstar Leeds [114]
2006 Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable [115]
2007 Manhunt 2 PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Wii, Windows Supportive development for Rockstar London [105]
2008 Grand Theft Auto IV PlayStation 3, Windows, Xbox 360 [117]
2009 Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned PlayStation 3, Windows, Xbox 360 [121]
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars Android, Fire OS, iOS, Nintendo DS, PlayStation Portable Co-developed with Rockstar Leeds [116]
Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony PlayStation 3, Windows, Xbox 360 [121]
2010 Red Dead Redemption Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Windows, Xbox 360 Supportive development for Rockstar San Diego [122]
2011 L.A. Noire Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Windows, Xbox 360, Xbox One Supportive development for Team Bondi
2012 Max Payne 3 macOS, PlayStation 3, Windows, Xbox 360 Developed as part of Rockstar Studios [123]
2013 Grand Theft Auto V PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S [124]
2018 Red Dead Redemption 2 PlayStation 4, Stadia, Windows, Xbox One Developed as part of Rockstar Games [142]

Cancelled

[edit]

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[edit]
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