Rockstar thought the GTA series was going to be a big flop

It’s been 25 years since the first Grand Theft Auto went on sale. The Rockstar Games series is one of the best-known and most successful IPs in the industry. In fact, there was a moment in the long history of GTA when you didn’t expect the games to be a success. The employees of DMA design – the studio at that time – assumed that GTA will flop.

No trust in GTA

In an interview with the BBC spoke Colin MacDonaldwho joined the team shortly before the launch of GTA in 1997 and later became a producer on GTA 2, about a internal survey at DMA Design. At the time, the studio was working on seven different titles for employees to rate. The focus was on the chances of success of the projects when they were finished. And Grand Theft Auto (buy now ) landed here on the last place.

Why was GTA badly rated?

However, the former employee also gives a reason why the title was not well received by the employees: “Midway through development, the direction of the game wasn’t clear. And it was pretty buggy – you couldn’t play it for a few minutes without crashing. At first you didn’t have a lot of confidence.” tells Colin Macdonald to the BBC. However, Sam and Dan Houser’s courage was finally rewarded.