Yesterday, we brought you word of a wonderfully insightful blog penned by former Rockstar Games technical director Obbe Vermeij, which reflected on his time at the studio as well as revealing delicious gamer tidbits to a ravenous audience. For example, we learned the fate of long-lost PS3 exclusive Agent in just a few short paragraphs, a game we've been reporting on for over a decade with very little new information.
All good things, alas, must come to an end, and the font of knowledge we could have had from Vermeij has suddenly, and we imagine quite pointedly, run dry. We noted yesterday that the original blog post had already been pulled, but Vermeij has since posted another update, explaining that Rockstar had seen the stories flying around and allegedly told him to shut it down. In a post titled "Sorry You Missed It", Vermeij writes:
"I got an email from R*North. Apparently some of the OGs 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."
Vermeij continues: "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 the 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.
We'll be waiting and ready to listen whenever he feels like talking again. Are you surprised at how quickly these Rockstar OGs reacted, or how fiercely they maintain the Rockstar "mystique"? Spill your beans in the comments section below.
[source insiderockstarnorth.blogspot.com]
Comments 10
Time to make up some of our own rockst*r stories then. Grand theft auto started off as a Barney & Friends Adventure game but the publisher thought the game was to violent so dma design toned down the violence and dropped the license and that’s how we got the original GTA
I want to read that email so badly. I can't imagine that some "OG" R* people were pissed to the point they went out of their way to contact Obbe to tell them that he was ruining the "Rockstar mystique."
This is really sad. I feel that these companies that annouce games that never come out should explain why at some point. Imagine whipping up an entire fanbase only to go dark for a decade but actively silence former employees about it. In a roundabout way an announced game that never materialized is like a broken promise.
Ehh, I'm probably reading too much into it.
Similar situation happened to Mike Dailey (creator of Lemmings & former DMA designer/ programmer,the precursor to what became Rockstar North),when he posted some old design shots & details of his GTA works from the original 2d top down view game. He was getting an effective cease & desist on his game that helped birth the current day Rockstar!🙄
It'd seem pretty harmless given they were hardly insights into the current day game engine/game but Rockstar/Take-two are gonna be the corporate hoods they once made fun of!
Rockstar have pretty much ruined their own "mystique" for me (a personal opinion note people) by jumping on the fleece your customer bandwagon with that lazy red dead ps3 port...
It's so ridiculous that they respond like this. It's more rude of Rockstar that they never addressed the cancellation.
And what mystical thing is there about Rockstar now it's GTA with if you are lucky Red Dead Redemption. They even respect the fanbase so little that they get cheap and even with terrible with old re-releases of games.
It's not like the guy was spoiling GTA6 or revealing future plans of the company so I'm not sure what made them upset. Weird but oh well.
It's such a shame that they don't allow developers to talk about their work even 10, 15, 20 years later. It's not like this is war secrets and the statute of limitations applies. Rockstar suck at things like this. Mystique? No! just self important.
"Rockstar mystique", hah. What a load of self-important horseshit.
“Something about ruining the Rockstar mystique or something."
Whats the point of protecting something that died ages ago?
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