GTA 6: who is Obbe Vermeij, ex-Rockstar technical director

Obbe Vermeij was Rockstar’s technical director on the development of GTA III, Vice City, San Andreas and GTA IV, according to VGC. He joined DMA Design, the Scottish studio that became Rockstar North, in 1995 and left in 2009. He has no part in Grand Theft Auto VI, due November 19, 2026 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, and has said himself he has “no inside information.” What he says about the game is a veteran’s opinion.

After Grand Theft Auto 2 shipped in October 1999, DMA Design opened a satellite studio in Leith, Edinburgh, and Vermeij moved there with Leslie Benzies and Aaron Garbut. The press does not agree on how long he stayed. VGC put it at 14 years in November 2023, GamesRadar+ wrote “more than 17 years” on September 1, 2024. The dates PC Gamer, GamesRadar+ and VGC all give, 1995 to 2009, make 14.

The blog Rockstar North asked him to trim

Vermeij wrote about the studio’s history on a blog, insiderockstarnorth.blogspot.com. He says that on November 22, 2023 Rockstar North emailed him asking him to take down posts about cancelled projects, including Agent, a spy game set in the 1970s and announced as a PS3 exclusive at E3 2009. He quoted the email: “Some of the OGs there are upset by my blog.” He wound the blog down.

He has since been making Plentiful, which he describes as “a relaxing game about creating conditions for nature to thrive,” with no release date.

What he has said about GTA 6

On July 23, 2024, talking to YouTube creator SanInPlay, he said the beach scene in the first trailer “blows me away,” then cooled expectations:

I don’t think it’s going to be wildly different from GTA 5, I think maybe people might be a little disappointed on the first day. But it’s still gonna be the best game out there.

On December 23, 2025, GamesRadar+ reported him dismissing the $100 price talk. Rockstar would “make it a regular-priced game and then make the money on the back-end in the years to come,” he said, because of an online component. The price did stay under $100, without the online component he expected: on June 24, 2026, Take-Two set the Standard Edition at $79.99 and described the game at launch as “a single-player experience,” with no new GTA Online. The full breakdown is in the editions guide.

The same day, in an interview with GamesHub picked up by PC Gamer, he said Rockstar had ideas for GTA games in Rio de Janeiro, Moscow and Istanbul, and that “Tokyo almost actually happened,” with another studio in Japan taking Rockstar’s code.

On August 24, 2026, during the CyberLeek leaks, he posted that the clips were “a nothing burger,” because “90% of future players don’t spend their time on the internet looking for video snippets.” He was at Rockstar North during Hot Coffee in San Andreas, “a nightmare for management (RNewYork)” that “didn’t affect us (RNorth) much,” and called the current leaks “far less consequential.” Rockstar New York “overreacts a bit at times,” he added, “but it is their job to try to stop these kind of leaks.” His forecast: GTA 6 will “sell for the next 15 years or so.”