Rockstar intervened due to humorous anecdotes on the blog of former Grand Theft Auto (GTA) developer Obbe Vermeij, who worked at Rockstar between 1995 and 2009.
Obbe Vermeijan old Rockstar North developer was stopped by Rockstar while sharing past stories on his blog. Vermeij, who worked at Rockstar from 1995 to 2009, made great contributions to the GTA series. On his personal blog, he shared information about the development process of GTA III, Vice City and San Andreas.
Rockstar Censored Former GTA Developer
Vermeij’s blog featured technical difficulties of the games and entertaining anecdotes. There were details on how GTA games were adapted to PS1, GTA III’s Dreamcast prototype, and how the bugs in San Andreas were fixed. Additionally, while working on Vice City, Rockstar artists’ idea for a zombie survival game was also shared.
However, due to Rockstar’s intervention, Vermeij was forced to remove most of the posts from his blog on November 22. He added a new post stating, “Some of the old-timers out there are upset with my blog.” “I made the mistake of not thinking that discussing 20-year-old video games would offend anyone. It was about undermining the rockstar vibe or something. I’m closing this blog because it’s not important enough to upset my former colleagues in Edinburgh,” he said.
Vermeij, who now lives in Canada, expressed frustration with Rockstar’s refusal to talk about its past processes. He stated that he hopes Rockstar will share more information about this, but it doesn’t look like that will happen anytime soon.
This incident shows how sensitive anecdotes and history around the game development process can be. This attitude of Rockstar seems to prevent further clarification of the stories behind the game development process.