Grand Theft Auto (video game)
Grand Theft Auto is an action-adventure video game developed by DMA Design and published by BMG Interactive. It was first released in Europe and North America in October 1997 for MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows. It was later re-released on 12 December 1997 in Europe and 30 June 1998 in North America for the PlayStation. It is the first instalment of the "Grand Theft Auto" series, to be followed by 1999's "Grand Theft Auto 2". The series, which has led to five main entries and several special edition games over 16 years, has sold more than 150 million units as of September 2013. The story follows a group of criminals in three fictionalised versions of US cities as they perform bank robberies, assassinations, and other illegal activities for their respective crime syndicates.
Rockstar North
BMG Interactive, publisher of "Grand Theft Auto", were bought by Take-Two Interactive in March 1998 for 1.85 million company shares, around 16% of their common stock, and some staff, including the Sam and Dan Houser, were carried across to Rockstar Games, which was formed as a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive in December 1998. During the changes in management, DMA Design lost many employees, including Kay, Hammond and Dailly. Several games were also scrapped during this time, including Nintendo 64 ports of "Grand Theft Auto" and "Wild Metal Country", a 64DD port of "Unreal" (1998), and a game known as "Attack!". On 29 September 1999, Take-Two Interactive announced that they had acquired DMA Design from Infogrames for . Sam Houser, who became Rockstar Games' executive producer, said that "the ability to align Rockstar with a development house [...] that is clearly approaching video-game development in a new and exciting manner, makes this a perfect match".