Mike Dailly, one of the founding members of the studio Grand Theft Autoit seems that some prototype videos of the original game were rock star.
If you’re not familiar with Daily, he’s the first employee DMA design, which later became Rockstar North, and went on to make the graphics engine for GTA. Daly also runs a YouTube channel where he uploads all sorts of technical stuff, including some behind-the-scenes stuff, early tests of games he’s worked on, including the first GTA prototypes, but he now claims Rockstar has pitched them delete.
According to PC Gamer, two of the videos that were taken down showed some renderings of the prototype graphics that Daily developed in the early ’90s. The first is a rotated isometric prototype and the other is a top-down prototype, both showing buildings and streets. Another video shows an old beta copy of GTA.
Daly explained to PC Gamer that the reason for the removal was that he released development footage without permission. In response, Daily has now removed all development-related GTA work from his YouTube. “Only direct examples of my own work remain – pieces that were never used in GTA but ‘inspired’ part of its evolution,” Daily wrote Twitter.
In a message to PC Gamer, Daily expressed disappointment at the situation, saying that “developers should always be allowed to show their work, especially 28 year olds!” It’s important to note that aside from second-hand original copies of games , the original GTA is not legally available in any form.
So even from a financial standpoint, it doesn’t make sense for Rockstar to remove these videos, since they don’t even make a profit from any sales of the game. Dailly’s videos have only a few hundred views, so it’s unlikely that they’re even likely to do any real harm, but unfortunately, it seems that Daily can’t continue posting about GTA-related content.
I saw Rockstar go into full jerk mode again, putting copyright strikes on any GTA video they could find – including my two prototype videos. So now they’re trying to block all releases of anyone’s game work – and any old development footage.
— Mike Dailly™ 🏴Ӡ Migrants August 21, 2022