LA Noire boss Brendan McNamara is back within GTA developer Rockstar, as the head of the newly-acquired and retitled studio Rockstar Australia.
Rockstar announced today it had bought McNamara’s Sydney-based developer Video Games Deluxe, following a decade of close collaboration on various Rockstar re-releases.
It was Video Games Deluxe – now re-named Rockstar Australia – that swooped in to update the recent GTA Trilogy port, following earlier work by another studio that was widely-criticised for its poor performance.
Video Games Deluxe also worked with Rockstar on the 2017 re-release of LA Noire, as well as the game’s VR Case Files version.
Of course, McNamara was responsible for the original version of LA Noire – he was its director, and the founder of its developer Team Bondi.
LA Noire was a commercial success and its technical ambition was praised, but Team Bondi closed less than a year after the game shipped following allegations of a toxic workplace and crunch culture during its seven-year development, and a furore over more than 100 people who worked on the project deliberately being left out of its credits.
“The expectation is slightly weird here, that you can do this stuff without killing yourself,” McNamara told IGN back in 2011, addressing the accusations of exploitative working practices. “Well, you can’t, whether it’s in London or New York or wherever; you’re competing against the best people in the world at what they do, and you just have to be prepared to do what you have to do to compete against those people.”
McNamara next tried to get a new game off the ground, named Whore of the Orient, though a publishing deal with Warner Bros. Interactive collapsed and the project was canned.
“It affects the company, yeah, definitely,” McNamara told Eurogamer in 2011, discussing the impact of the accusations surrounding LA Noire’s development on Team Bondi’s ability to get another project off the ground. “It affects my reputation. But it also affects people’s opportunities in Australia.
“People are entitled to their opinion. I’m perfectly happy for people to say they don’t like working with me or I’m a bully or I’m this or whatever,” he continued. “The part that annoys me is people do it anonymously. I’d rather they just ring me up and tell me to fuck off, right? Or people want to print your company emails on the internet. I’m like, what is that about? That could happen to any company in the business.”
It’s unclear what Rockstar Australia will be working on specifically now – though with the launch of GTA 6 on the horizon, it’s unlikely to be much else.
“It’s been an honour to work closely with Rockstar Games this past decade,” McNamara said in a statement today. “We are thrilled to be a part of Rockstar Games and to continue our efforts to make the best games possible.”
Rockstar parent company Take-Two Interactive recently narrowed down GTA 6’s release date to an autumn 2025 window.
