Recently, a former Rockstar employee began a blog that reminisced about his time at the company and the games he helped make. However, since then, the Edinburgh branch of the developer has asked for the posts to be taken down.
What was the issue?
In a recent post titled “Sorry you missed it,” former technical director Obbe Vermeij said he was contacted specifically by Rockstar North, saying that some on the team were “upset” over the blog. As a result, he has since removed the older posts but is hoping it’ll be possible to carry on at a later date.
Vermeij was discussing his time at Rockstar North, where he began at the company back in 1995 when it was called DMA Design. The posts revealed some interesting information about some of the classic games he helped make.
For example, he said that Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was almost an expansion pack for GTA 3, and that the team was interested in making a zombie game using the Vice City source code. There was also some discussion on the elusive Agent, a supposed stealth-action game being developed by Rockstar.
While Vermeij was under the impression that the studio wouldn’t mind him “talking about 20-year-old games,” he wanted to make things clear that he was not threatened with legal action.
A recent tweet from him said that he took the blog down because it “seemed to annoy” his old colleagues at Rockstar North. He insists that he was not issued with a cease and desist or that he was being silenced.
At the time of writing, Rockstar itself has not publically commented on the blog. Vermeij left the company in 2009, a few months after the release of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars.
