Rockstar Leeds Founder Gordon Hall Dies at Age 51

Gordon Hall, the founder of the Rockstar Leeds studio, had died at the age of 51. The game developer worked on different Grand Theft Auto games outside of the mainline numbered series such as Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories and Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars and later worked at Activision Blizzard Mobile. No cause of death has been reported at the time of publishing.

Hall's death was reported on first by GamesIndustry.biz who cited sources within the Yorkshire area's development scene. Rockstar Leeds, the studio most associated with Hall, is a Rockstar studio based in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England.

Hall founded his own studio called Möbius Entertainment Limited back in 1996 before the company was purchased by Rockstar and eventually was transformed into Rockstar Leeds. From there, Hall worked on games like the Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories and Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars games mentioned. Since those games, Rockstar Leeds has gone on to support other branches of Rockstar development while working on titles such as Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto V, and Red Dead Redemption 2 in various capacities.

Hall himself contributed to work done on the original Red Dead Redemption while working alongside Rockstar San Diego. He returned to Leeds afterwards but eventually resigned from the studio before taking a break from working on games to study them instead. He later joined Activision Blizzard Mobile as the chief creative officer.

Though games like Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars may not be the titles that people think of first when they think of the Grand Theft Auto series, the game and others that Hall and Rockstar Leeds worked on were received favorably by the community when released. Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories was released first in 2005 for the PlayStation Portable and PlayStation 2 and later came to mobile platforms. Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars was notably the first Grand Theft Auto game to release for Nintendo's mobile systems when it released for the Nintendo DS in 2009 as well as for the PlayStation Portable and mobile platforms.

Hall is said to be survived by one son, James.