Rockstar Games, Inc. is an American video game publisher located in New York City. The company was created in December 1998 as a part of Take-Two Interactive, using assets that Take-Two had previously purchased from BMG Interactive. The people who started the company were Terry Donovan, Gary Foreman, Dan and Sam Houser, and Jamie King, who were all working for Take-Two at the time. The Houser brothers had previously been executives at BMG Interactive. Sam Houser is the president of the studio.
Since 1999, several companies that were bought by or created under Take-Two have become part of Rockstar Games. For example, Rockstar Canada (later renamed Rockstar Toronto) became the first in 1999, and Rockstar Australia was the most recent addition in 2025. All companies under Rockstar Games use the "Rockstar" name and logo. In this way, Rockstar Games is sometimes called Rockstar New York, Rockstar NY, or Rockstar NYC. Rockstar Games also owns a motion capture studio in Bethpage, New York.
Rockstar Games mainly publishes games in the action-adventure genre, and racing games have also been successful for the company. One popular action-adventure game series is Grand Theft Auto, which Rockstar Games inherited from BMG Interactive, the company that originally published the series' 1997 game. The most recent main game in the series, Grand Theft Auto V, has sold over 220 million copies since its release in September 2013, making it the second-best-selling video game of all time. Other well-known game series published by Rockstar Games include Red Dead, Midnight Club, Max Payne, and Manhunt.
History
On March 12, 1998, Take-Two Interactive announced it would buy the assets of BMG Interactive, a British video game publisher that was no longer active. BMG Interactive was owned by BMG Entertainment, which was part of Bertelsmann. In exchange, Take-Two agreed to give BMG Entertainment 1.85 million shares of its common stock, which was about 16% of the company. Through this deal, Take-Two gained several video game titles from BMG Interactive, including DMA Design’s Grand Theft Auto and Space Station Silicon Valley. The transaction was completed on March 25. Three BMG Interactive executives—Dan Houser, Sam Houser, and Jamie King—along with Gary Foreman from BMG Interactive and Terry Donovan from BMG Entertainment’s Arista Records, moved to New York City to work for Take-Two. In April, Sam Houser was named Take-Two’s "vice president of worldwide product development." In December 1998, Sam Houser, Dan Houser, Terry Donovan, and Jamie King created Rockstar Games as a special publishing label under Take-Two. This was officially announced on January 22, 1999.
In January 2007, Terry Donovan, who had been managing director of Rockstar Games, left the company after taking a four-month leave. Gary Dale replaced him as chief operating officer. Gary Dale had previously worked with the Houser brothers and Jamie King at BMG Interactive but left when BMG was bought by Take-Two. He later joined Capcom’s European operations as managing director in 2003.
By February 2014, Rockstar Games had sold more than 250 million copies of its games. The most successful series was Grand Theft Auto, which sold at least 250 million copies by November 2016. Grand Theft Auto V sold the most copies of any game in the series or company history, with over 220 million units sold. This made it the second best-selling video game of all time.
At the 10th British Academy Games Awards in March 2014, Rockstar Games received the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award for creating detailed and complex interactive worlds that helped the company remain a leader in the gaming industry for over ten years. Jennifer Kolbe, who began working at Take-Two as a receptionist, became Rockstar Games’ head of publishing and oversees all development studios. Simon Ramsey is the company’s head of public relations and communications.
In May 2019, Rockstar Games announced it would buy Dhruva Interactive from Starbreeze Studios for $7.9 million. The sale was completed later that month, and the Dhruva team joined Rockstar India.
In September 2019, Rockstar Games launched its own game launcher, which provides digital distribution, digital rights management, multiplayer, and communication services. After a long break following the release of Red Dead Redemption 2 in early 2019, Dan Houser left Rockstar Games on March 11, 2020.
In October 2020, Rockstar Games acquired the Scottish studio Ruffian Games and renamed it Rockstar Dundee.
In September 2022, Rockstar Games experienced a data breach in which 90 videos from the development of Grand Theft Auto VI were leaked. Rockstar called the leak a "network intrusion" and said it was "extremely disappointed" by how the game was first shown, but it believed the incident would not affect long-term development.
In August 2023, Rockstar Games acquired Cfx.re (CitizenFX), the team behind the modding platforms FiveM and RedM for Grand Theft Auto V and Red Dead Redemption 2, respectively. Michael Unsworth, vice president of writing, left the company in 2023 after sixteen years. In March 2025, Rockstar announced it would buy Sydney-based studio Video Games Deluxe, which included former developers of L.A. Noire, and rename it Rockstar Australia.
In April 2026, Rockstar Games was targeted by the ShinyHunters hacking group, which threatened to leak information on April 14. In a statement to Kotaku, Rockstar confirmed the breach and said the incident had "no impact on our organization or our players."
Company philosophy
In October 2011, Dan Houser said to Famitsu that Rockstar Games was choosing not to develop games in the first-person shooter genre. He explained that Rockstar believes it is important to do things differently, stating, "The goal of Rockstar is to help players understand what we want to express." Houser added, "Our games have been unlike any other types of games that existed before; we created new types of games, such as the GTA series, on our own. We did not follow advice from business books to create our games. … If we make the kind of games we want to play, we believe people will buy them."
Rockstar Games has participated in charitable activities, such as supporting Movember, offering in-game appearances as prizes, and hosting charity live streams.
Labor relations
In October 2018, Jason Schreier wrote about the work habits at Rockstar Games. He reported that many current and past employees said they were asked or felt they had to work late nights and weekends. These workers often said they worked about 55 to 60 hours each week. Rockstar admitted that some employees worked evenings and weekends but argued that the reported average hours were not typical, as they believed these numbers came from a small group of people who had extreme work experiences.
In October 2025, Rockstar fired 30 to 40 employees in Canada and the United Kingdom. The company said the workers were fired because they shared confidential information publicly. Take-Two Interactive, the parent company of Rockstar, stated the firings were due to "gross misconduct" and nothing else. However, the Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain (IWGB) disagreed, claiming the company was trying to stop employees from forming a union. The union said the workers were trying to organize with labor organizers on Discord. Alex Marshall, leader of the IWGB, called the firings "the most obvious and harsh example of union busting in the games industry." The IWGB held protests outside Rockstar North and Take-Two's offices in Edinburgh and London on November 6, with support from Ross Greer, a co-leader of the Scottish Greens.
In December 2025, Labour MP Chris Murray brought the issue up during a government meeting after speaking with the affected workers. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the firings were "deeply concerning" and announced the government would look into the situation.
In January 2026, a preliminary hearing at the Glasgow Employment Tribunal considered whether Rockstar should continue paying the fired workers while a full hearing was planned. The tribunal decided that it was unlikely a full hearing would find that union membership was the main reason for the firings.
Studios
Rockstar Games has several branch studios in many countries around the world, in addition to its main office in New York City. Each studio uses the Rockstar Games logo, but with different colors. As of 2018, the company employs more than 2,000 people in all of its offices. The studios often work together. In the game Max Payne 3, they were called Rockstar Studios. In Red Dead Redemption 2, they were called Rockstar Games.
Software
The Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE) is a tool created by a team inside Rockstar San Diego called the RAGE Technology Group. It was developed in 2006 to help make games for all platforms, including personal computers and consoles. RAGE is used in many Rockstar Games titles, such as Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto IV, Max Payne 3, Grand Theft Auto V, and Red Dead Redemption 2.
Rockstar Games Social Club is an online service created by Rockstar Games to help players log in and play games with others. Most signs of Social Club were removed from Rockstar's website by November 2023.
Rockstar Games released its own game launcher for Windows on September 17, 2019. The launcher connects to the user's Social Club account, allowing them to download and buy games they have already purchased through Rockstar's store. It also lets users start playing Rockstar games that are available on other services, such as Steam.
Other projects
In 1999, Donovan and Sam Houser worked with John Davis to create the Rockstar Loft club night. Davis had started and promoted Body & Soul, a weekly party at Tribeca’s Club Vinyl that did not use guest lists or velvet ropes. When Rockstar Games’ founder first arrived in New York City, former DJ Donovan was impressed by Body & Soul and formed a close relationship with the club’s team, including Davis and DJ François K. Davis wanted to create more events like Body & Soul, while Donovan and Houser aimed to raise awareness for Rockstar Games. This led to the creation of Rockstar Loft. Donovan explained that the event was meant to be an alternative to expensive parties where guests were sometimes forced out by security. He avoided including video game displays to focus on music and highlight the performers.
Because Rockstar Games could not afford regular TV ads, it used guerrilla marketing teams to distribute flyers and stickers. Tickets for Rockstar Loft were not sold in advance. Instead, people called a phone number and answered seven questions about their personality. If the operator liked the answers, the caller received a ticket by mail. The first Rockstar Loft event took place in western Chelsea, Manhattan, on October 30, 1999, with Andi Hanley (a regular at Body & Soul), Bob Sinclar, and Dimitri from Paris as the main DJs. The event was held “every few months” after that, with one on February 19, 2000. Later that year, Rockstar Loft ended.
Kirk Ewing, a friend of the Houser brothers who worked with Rockstar Games on State of Emergency, said that around the release of Grand Theft Auto III in 2001, Rockstar Games was offered $5 million to make a film based on the Grand Theft Auto franchise. A producer in Los Angeles asked for the rights to make a movie directed by Tony Scott of Top Gun and starring rapper Eminem. When Houser heard about this, he said he was not interested. In 2004, Rockstar Games produced the sports drama film The Football Factory, based on a book by John King about organized football hooliganism in the United Kingdom. The company also made Sunday Driver, a documentary about the Majestics Lowrider Club in Compton, California, and The Introduction, an animated film about the events leading up to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Both films were included with the game’s special edition released in 2005.
In May 2021, Rockstar Games launched the record label CircoLoco Records in partnership with Circoloco, a dance party in Ibiza. The collaboration began through a friendship between Sam Houser and Antonio Carbonaro, Circoloco’s promoter. Nick Benedetti, Circoloco’s manager, said Rockstar Games and Circoloco wanted to “contribute something new and meaningful” to the dance music scene, which had struggled due to the lockdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. CircoLoco Records’ first release, Monday Dreamin’, was released as a series of extended plays starting in June 2021.