Rockstar North CEO leaves studio

Rockstar North CEO Leslie Benzies has left the studio. Rockstar North is a Rockstar studio and is responsible for most of the Grand Theft Auto series, among others. Benzies had been with the company for seventeen years.

Rockstar made this known to Kotaku when the game news site asked questions about the leave that Benzies had taken. According to the studio, Benzies took a leave of absence in September 2014 and has now decided not to return to the company. Benzies joined the company in 1999 and has since worked on popular games such as Red Dead Redemption and the post-2002 Grand Theft Auto games. He was the lead developer for the majority of GTA games.

Leslie Benzies joined the studio when it was still called DMA Design. There he started developing the Nintendo 64 game Space Station Silicon Valley. The studio was then taken over by Rockstar Games, which is again part of Take-Two Interactive, and then mainly continued developing the Grand Theft Auto games.

After the release of Grand Theft Auto V, Rockstar had already announced that Benzies would take a leave of absence, but after seventeen months of leave, it appears that he will not return to the company. For now, the studio is led by studio co-founder Aaron Garbut and artistic director Rob Nelson.