Rockstar Games has found itself involved in a new controversy associated with the Grand Theft Auto series. Rather than this controversy dealing with the upcoming GTA 6, GTA 5, or GTA Online, though, the studio is instead coming under fire for some moves that it has made in association with the original game in the series. And to make matters even worse, the person at the center of this story happens to be a former developer on the Grand Theft Auto franchise.
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According to new allegations from Mike Dailly, who is one of the original programmers that worked on 1997’s Grand Theft Auto, Rockstar Games has recently issued copyright strikes to videos associated with the game that were uploaded to YouTube. Dailly, who worked at DMA Design (which eventually became Rockstar North), had previously shared videos that contained footage from prototype versions of GTA. Dailly had seemingly posted these videos for no other reason than to give interested fans some insight into how Grand Theft Auto was made. Clearly, though, Rockstar doesn’t seem to want this information on the internet for one reason or another.
“I see Rockstar are going full fu**ers mode again, issuing copyright strikes to any GTA video they can find – including both my prototype videos,” Dailly said on Twitter. “So now they’re trying to block all release of anyone’s work on a game – and any old development footage.”
Following this initial message from Dailly, he went on to say that he has now removed all of his original “GTA dev stuff” that was previously posted online. He also shared a glimpse of a development document from Grand Theft Auto that he said would “now never see the light of day.” Despite having helped create Grand Theft Auto, Dailly seems to have no current love for “Rocksuck,” as he went on to call the company.
It’s worth noting that Dailly hasn’t shared anything directly from Rockstar that confirms that the studio is the one sending out these copyright strikes in the first place. As such, these are merely allegations from Dailly for the time being. If anything new comes from this situation in the future, though, we’ll be sure to update you.
Do you understand why Rockstar would make these moves to copyright strike old Grand Theft Auto development videos? And why do you think that the studio would opt to do this in the first place? Let me know your own thoughts on this matter either down in the comments or hit me up on social media at @MooreMan12.
[H/T VGC]
