In a tweet early this morning, Grand Theft Auto co-creator Mike Dailly claimed that Rockstar Games issued a DMCA strike against his YouTube channel for posting prototype footage of the original Grand Theft Auto title.
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Busted
Mike Dailly may not be a household name, but he is responsible for some of the most important franchises of the 90s. As a co-founder of DMA Design, which would later become Rockstar North, Dailly helped create the Lemmings franchise and was instrumental in the creation of the original Grand Theft Auto. Being that he was there from the beginning, it makes sense that he would still have some prototype footage and screenshots from earlier builds of Rockstar’s crime simulator. Sadly, the company doesn’t want people seeing those early builds, at least according to a tweet from Dailly.
I see Rockstar are going full fuckers mode again, issuing copyright strikes to any GTA video they can find – including both my prototype videos. So now they're trying to block all release of anyone's work on a game – and any old development footage.
— Mike Dailly™ 🏴🇺🇦🇵🇸💙 (@mdf200) August 21, 2022
As tweeted earlier this morning, Dailly stated that Rockstar has been going “full fuckers mode again” and has issued copyright strikes against his footage of GTA prototypes. “They’re trying to block all release of anyone’s work on the game,” stated Dailly. The videos reportedly showed some of the original builds of GTA, though that footage is no longer available.
Smoked
As with a lot of developers, Rockstar has been very tight-lipped when it comes to sharing development videos of its titles. Any documentation about past Grand Theft Auto titles is rare to come by, though some of the original development team has begun sharing videos in the last few years. Dailly’s claim is the first of its kind, suggesting that maybe something has changed at Rockstar for the company to become DMCA happy. This could also be a fluke as YouTube’s copyright strike system is ridiculously easy to abuse. Rockstar has yet to make any public comment regarding Dailly’s claims.
