In the past week or so, Obbe Vermeij, a former Rockstar North developer who worked on games like GTA III, Vice City, San Andreas, GTA IV, and more, has been sharing stories and long-kept secrets about the development of these titles online. However, Vermeij has now been contacted by Rockstar North and has been asked to cease posting blog entries about his journeys.

In his recent blog post he said,

Today (22 Nov 2023) I got an email from R*North.
Apparently some of the OG’s there are upset by my blog. I genuinely didn’t think anyone would mind me talking about 20 year old games but I was wrong. Something about ruining the Rockstar mystique or something.
Anyway,
This blog isn’t important enough to me to piss off my former colleagues in Edinburgh so I’m winding it down.
I’ll maybe just leave a few articles with anecdotes that don’t affect anyone but me.
I would love for Rockstar to open up about development of the trilogy themselves, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen anytime soon.
Maybe I’ll try again in a decade or two.
Till then, Obbe.

For a week or two, Obbe Vermeij was sharing behind-the-scenes details about some of our favourite Grand Theft Auto titles, including San Andreas. His stories exposed a side of the development that is rarely seen. His revelation that Rockstar Games was developing a zombie survival game in the 2000s appeared to be the straw that broke the camel’s back.