Rockstar Games have shared their feelings which have put an end to a blog by a ex-developer at the company. This might not come as much of a surprise based on previous actions taken by Rockstar and its parent company. Last year, the creator of GTA posted his prototypes before they were hit with a copyright claim.
Over the past few days, we’ve been reporting on the fascinating insights provided by former technical director at Rockstar North Obbe Vermeij. Many community members have shared their love for Obbe’s blog posts which have revealed some very interesting and fun info from his time working on classic games.
What happened?
After putting out several fantastic blog posts that has now come to an unfortunate and premature end. In his latest blog post, Obbe writes that he got an email from Rockstar North on November 22nd.
Today (22 Nov 2023) I got an email from R*North.
Apparently some of the OG’s there are upset by my blog. I genuinely didn’t think anyone would mind me talking about 20 year old games but I was wrong. Something about ruining the Rockstar mystique or something.
Anyway,
This blog isn’t important enough to me to piss off my former colleagues in Edinburgh so I’m winding it down.
I’ll maybe just leave a few articles with anecdotes that don’t affect anyone but me.
I would love for Rockstar to open up about development of the trilogy themselves, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen anytime soon.
Maybe I’ll try again in a decade or two.
Till then, Obbe.
He clarified on Twitter/X that he was not forced to shutdown the blog and its posts but “just a former colleague letting me know that several people in North didn’t like the Blog. That’s all.”
Rockstar’s business
Whilst the secrecy of Rockstar Games is one of the reasons why they have garnered a rabid fanbase, opening up some of that for games close to two decades old isn’t too far.
We’d like to thank Obbe for being honest as well as sharing what he did. The community members who did read his posts were certainly very happy with the content. Some of the insights were genuinely incredible.
One of our favourite quotes from Obbe came from his San Andreas development post. It’s a reminder that people build these games with all their energy and are often not known as the rock stars they should be.
I didn’t expect it to be too busy but there was a line of 50 meters or so. I bumped into 2 artists from the office doing the same thing. We were standing there looking at all these people being so excited. People got their game and hurried straight home to play the game we’d made, all through the night. It was magical.
That’s the thing about making games. You’re just working away in an office and it’s hard to gage the excitement of players out there. Especially before the internet, you just didn’t have that feedback.
Obbe Vermeij
The earlier titles from Rockstar Games helped shape the gaming industry and even entertainment and culture. Hearing how they achieved their feats is always worth listening to.
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Source: Obbe Vermeij
