Rockstar Games
More info
- Creator
- Sam Houser, Dan Houser, Terry Donovan, Jamie King, Gary Foreman
- Released
- 1998
- Owner
- Take-Two Interactive
- Type
- Game publisher
The New York publisher behind Grand Theft Auto, which ships few games, rarely, and sells them by the hundred million.
Rockstar was set up inside Take-Two Interactive in 1998 by brothers Sam and Dan Houser and colleagues. The GTA series had already started at DMA Design in Dundee, the studio later renamed Rockstar North. GTA III (2001) turned the open 3D city into a genre, and GTA V (2013) became one of the best-selling games ever made – largely thanks to its online mode, which kept printing money for more than a decade.
The games run on Rockstar's in-house RAGE engine. The scandals have been as public as the hits: in 2005 a disabled sex scene, "Hot Coffee", turned out to still be sitting in the game files, triggering a re-rating and a recall. Take-Two also bought Zynga in 2022.