Rockstar Vancouver

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Rockstar Vancouver
Type subsidiary
Founded August 2002
Headquarters Vancouver, British Columbia
Industry Game development
Products Bully
Parent Rockstar Games

Rockstar Vancouver is a video game studio located in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia. Rockstar Vancouver released Bully, a controversial title exclusively for the PlayStation 2 on October 17, 2006.[1] Rockstar Vancouver employs 75 people and develops action titles exclusively for Rockstar Games.

[edit] History

Rockstar Vancouver started as Barking Dog Studios, and was founded in May 1998 by several former employees of Radical Entertainment. Barking Dog, with publishing assistance by Sierra Studios, moved on to produce a sequel to the 1999 PC Magazine Game of the Year Homeworld entitled Homeworld: Cataclysm. Homeworld had been developed by Relic Entertainment but Sierra chose instead to use Barking Dog to develop the game.

Barking Dog was also retained by Valve Software for minor finishing touches on an early beta version of the popular first-person shooter Counter-Strike. Their legacy can be seen on the Counter-Strike map de_train where their cartoon dog logo can be seen on the side of a railcar.

Barking Dog also produced other games such as Global Operations, Transworld Skateboarding and Treasure Planet. They were acquired by Rockstar Games in August 2002, and became known as Rockstar Vancouver. The name Barking Dog Studios was then sold to a web site/application development company.

Many Barking Dog employees later split off to form their own companies, such as Kerberos Productions and Ironclad Games.

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