Rockstar Games announced it’s acquiring Video Games Deluxe, the Sydney-based studio behind L.A. Noire: The VR Case Files (2017) and the shelved Quest port of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004).

The details of the acquisition haven’t been made public, however Rockstar says in a press statement that Video Games Deluxe has now been renamed to ‘Rockstar Australia’, and will “continue [its] efforts to make the best games possible.”

In addition to those VR ports, Video Games Deluxe is best known for its work on hit detective game L.A. Noire (2011), as well as the Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy (2021) compilation, which brought GTA III (2001), GTA: Vice City (2002) and GTA: San Andreas to mobile and modern consoles.

Image courtesy Meta

Shortly before the compilation’s re-release in late 2021 though, Rockstar and Meta (then Facebook) announced they were working to port GTA: San Andreas (2004) to Quest 2, which was slated to be led by Video Games Deluxe.

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Rockstar never publicly announced Video Games Deluxe was involved, likely owing to the fact the port was cancelled shortly thereafter, however in a 2020 job listing the studio tipped its hand by announcing it was creating a “AAA open world title in VR” for Rockstar.

As a long-time support studio for Rockstar, the acquisition likely won’t change much for any potential revival of GTA: San Andreas for Quest. After years of silence, Meta confirmed with IGN in August 2024 the project was put “on hold indefinitely.”

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • Peter vasseur

    Everyone who though gta ss was ever going to run on a game q2 standalone was smoking.

    • VRDeveloper

      It's very plausible, did you know that GTA San Andreas has ridiculous specifications? It would certainly be one of the lightest games that Meta quest 2 would have. And I'm not even being ironic, you think it would be heavy because the game design is perfect.. so it's not an ugly game, even after decades, but is very, very light..

      • Christian Schildwaechter

        TL;DR: both RE4 and GTA SA were 6th gen console games/PS2 games with comparable performance requirements, with very similar circumstances for their Quest ports, and other games from that era would still be the most fitting for standalone ports.

        Just based on the timeline it is very similar to Resident Evil 4 for Quest.

        RE4 was originally released in 2005 for the Nintendo GameCube, after initially targeting PS2. It got a hires remaster in 2011 that was the base for PS3/Xbox 360/PC releases, and an Android version in 2013. The 2021 Quest 2 port by Armature Studios was ported to Unreal Engine from Capcom's internal RE Engine, with recreated assets. Before Armature had create Sports Scramble for Oculus Studios, and ported games to PS Vita, Nintendo 3S, Switch plus PS/Xbox/PC.

        GTA San Andreas was released for PS2 in 2004, Xbox and Windows in 2005, mobile in 2010, with a remastered version in 2021. For the Quest 2 port Rockstar picked Video Games Deluxe that created the 2017 L.A. Noire: The VR Case Files based on the 2011 L.A. Noire from Team Bondi and published by Rockstar, a studio that already had experience with GTA II/VC/SA ports to mobile. [The founder/creative director of both Video Games Deluxe and Team Bondi is the same person.]

        So two games that:

        – originated on 6th gen PS2
        – saw Android releases after a couple of years
        – got remasters with HD graphics
        – were given to external studios that had converted other flat games to VR
        – with both studios also having previous experience porting to low performance platforms and working with the company paying for the port

        Pretty sure a number of similar PS2 era games would be candidates for Quest ports too. I'm not sure if the same would be true for PS3 to Quest 3/3S ports, as the PS3 got a way more powerful CPU, while CPU performance on the XR2 Gen 2 only rose by 16%/34%/44% in graphics heavy apps like games/balanced apps/CPU heavy apps. The focus for XR2 Gen 2 was GPU with 2.5x the performance of Quest 2. The Xbox 360 that competed with PS3 and featured a better CPU/GPU balance allowed for 12x the graphics performance of the original Xbox, so PS2 games might still be the most reasonable source of Quest 3 ports.

  • Christian Schildwaechter

    This of course requires a huge dose of hopium, but maybe Sony changing their PSVR2 strategy mid 2024, now selling the HMD in way larger numbers thanks to a more reasonable price, changed Rockstar's mind regarding hybrid games.

    GTA 6 would probably be too far in its development to start adding a VR mode now. But Sony briefed developers in August 2021 about their new hybrid strategy, and Rockstar as a major player might have known before. So it's possible that they designed GTA 6 to be playable in VR, then backed down from actually releasing a VR capable version after the disappointing launch and sales of PSVR2, and now again consider finishing it.

    Which is where a studio known for the VR version of L.A. Noire, published by Rockstar, also experienced with GTA from both the never realized San Andreas port for Quest and the GTA Trilogy on the performance restricted Android and iOS platforms requiring extra optimization, would come in handy. Already familiar with the franchise, working with Rockstar and translating flat games to VR, they'd be able to enter the project quickly and contribute a lot of polish based on their experience.

    I wouldn't bet on that happening, and just based on sales potential Rockstar is probably more interested in their mobile ports. But no doubt GTA 6 playable in VR would provide an incredible boost for PSVR2 and VR in general, so maybe Sony now finally trying to make PSVR2 a success also provided some extra motivation in the form of money, promotion or something similar.

    • VRDeveloper

      "hopium" That's funny.. very true.

      • mirak

        I didn't get it at first

  • BabyFaceMonster

    It was never gonna happen

  • Andrey

    So, let me clarify something:

    Rockstar (or Take Two) never cared about Video Game Deluxe for years (especially all those years after L.A. Noire VR release) to actually buy it and make it another full-blown Rockstar studio.

    …BUT as soon as VGD were able to make a much better job on making remasters of previous instalments in the franchise for Netflix than Groove Street Games, Rockstar (or, again, Take Two – and now it's much more possible that it was indeed puiblisher's initiative if you know Strauss Zelnick's ambitions to get all the money in the world) suddenly decided to finally buy them…

    You may say that it's just a conspiracy, but I actually think that because of T2 and it's greediness (f.e. all their efforts like literally blocking all possible mods for their games) we, VR gamers, lost one of the greatest VR games if not of decade, but of the corresponding year.

    And why after all this time noone from VR journalists still never contacted either current or previous staff from the VGD (especially after the guarantees of annonymity) and never asked them what the hell exactly happend? Was there some kind of actual progress/working build and so on?

  • Dale Kirkley

    It was being worked on pretty seriously when I worked at Rockstar. I talked with one of the lead devs about it at length when I was moving assets from one project depot into another, and they had done a good amount of the groundwork already. I moved to another gaming company during COVID and that was the end of my insight. :)

    • Awesome, man!
      Thank you!
      []^. )

  • kool

    If anything at all may be a proper vr port of gta v

  • xyzs

    Not gonna happen.

    GTA targets bros playing on their sofa through xbox or ps, they don’t give a damn about the nerds with a headset on the face.