Rockstar Leeds

Rockstar Leeds started out as Möbius Entertainment, founded in December 1997 by Ian J. Bowden, Dave Box, Gordon Hall and Jason McGann, who had worked together at the studio Hookstone. They moved into the former St Paul's Parish Church in Stanningley, Pudsey, near Leeds, and went about sixteen months without pay before signing their first deal. They soon found they worked best as a small team and that handheld games suited that size.

Its first project was Alfred's Adventure (2000) for the Game Boy Color, a remake of Alfred Chicken published by SCi, followed in 2002 by another Alfred Chicken remake for the PlayStation. For SCi it also worked on Titanium Angels, which was cancelled. It then made Game Boy Advance games for several publishers: High Heat Major League Baseball conversions and Army Men: Turf Wars for The 3DO Company, Drome Racers, A Sound of Thunder and the Max Payne adaptation for Rockstar Games.

Around 2002 it began an engine for a future high-powered handheld, and when Sony announced the PSP the specifications matched. Several publishers wanted to buy the studio; it picked Rockstar because it did not demand rapid growth. Take-Two bought it in March 2004 and renamed it Rockstar Leeds. With Rockstar North it made Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (2005) and Vice City Stories (2006), and in 2009 Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, the highest-rated Nintendo DS game on Metacritic.

That year it won Best Handheld Games Studio at the Develop Industry Excellence Awards. It then moved away from handhelds: it helped Rockstar San Diego on Red Dead Redemption, brought L.A. Noire to Windows in 2011 and worked on Grand Theft Auto V (2013) and Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018). In 2010 two former staff members, Lee Hutchinson and Matt Shepcar, left to found Double Eleven. It remains part of Rockstar Games, with offices in the Holbeck area of Leeds.