Rockstar Co-Founder Leaves, Ex-Devs Form New Studio

Someone old, someone new, something shut down, born anew. Rockstar Games went through quite a few changes recently, starting with the appointment of a new COO at the beginning of this month, and continuing with the recent departure of one of its co-founders, and the formation of a new development company from the ashes of the old Rockstar Vienna studio - swiftly shut down by Take-Two in May of last year.

One of the first news to surface in 2007, was the appointment of a new Chief Operating Officer for the Rockstar group. As we reported at that time, Gary Dale joined the company as COO, after acting as the European Managing Director for Capcom since 2003. Previous to that, though, Dale had a long history of working with Rockstar Games and Take-Two: between 1994-1998, he was President of the Interactive Software and Video Division of BMG Entertainment, until Take-Two acquired BMG in 1998. During that time, he oversaw the release of over 30 games, including Grand Theft Auto from DMA Design, which later became Rockstar North.

Then, a couple of weeks later (that would be... right, this week), it was announced that Rockstar's leadership was going through another major change, after Terry Donovan took a permanent vacation. Donovan co-founded Rockstar Games and served as the company's managing director. Take-Two said that his former responsabilities will be shared by others within the organization - namely Sam Houser, Dan Houser, and Gary Dale. We take it they saw this coming, then, since they had already hired Dale two weeks earlier?

Well, let's leave it at that for now, and finally turn our attention to the former team from Rockstar Vienna. Having been thrown out in the street in May 2006, many developers were forced to go grab a beer and take life into their own hands. Later, at some point, some of them decided to start anew, and this week they announced the formation of Games That Matter Productions. The new studio's website anticipates that they will hold a press conference on January 25, 2007, in order to announce "the goals and business model of Games That Matter". So we'll get back to them soon enough, if there will be anything worth reporting.

(N.B. Archive text, links removed)