Jones sells DMA to Gremlin months before GTA changes everything
A hundred-person Dundee studio joins Sheffield's Gremlin, keeps its autonomy on paper, and gives up full ownership just before its biggest game lands
Quick facts
- Buyer
- Gremlin Interactive, Sheffield
- Founder's new role
- David Jones joined Gremlin's board as Creative Director
- DMA staff at the sale
- About 100, in Dundee
- Combined development force
- Over 250
- Terms per the release
- Semi-autonomous DMA; five original titles a year; Gremlin label from 1998
- GTA arrangement
- Gremlin honoured BMG's existing publishing agreement
- Reported price
- £4.2 million (not yet verified in the contemporary record)
- What came next
- Gremlin, then Infogrames, then Take-Two within three years
What happened
Months before Grand Theft Auto shipped, David Jones sold DMA Design to Gremlin Interactive, the Sheffield publisher whose recent titles included Realms of the Haunting and VR Soccer. Gremlin's own announcement shows the logic of the deal: DMA brought roughly a hundred staff in Dundee, doubling Gremlin's development force to over 250, along with the Lemmings pedigree of twenty million units shipped and a seat as, in the release's words, "the UK flagship in Nintendo's 'Dream-Team'". DMA was to run on a semi-autonomous basis and deliver at least five original titles a year, with Jones joining Gremlin's board as Creative Director alongside chairman Ian Stewart, and all future DMA titles carrying the Gremlin label from 1998. Jones told the press he was pleased the combined company was entirely UK based and that DMA could now focus fully on making games. As part of the arrangement, Gremlin honoured BMG Interactive's existing agreement to publish Grand Theft Auto, so DMA's biggest game reached the world months after its studio had been sold.
Why it matters
Ten years after the Timex redundancy, DMA's independence ended, and the timing became industry legend: Jones sold the studio in the same year Grand Theft Auto turned it into a phenomenon. The sale opened the corporate pass-the-parcel era, with DMA moving from Gremlin to Infogrames and on to Take-Two within three years, the chain that would land the studio inside Rockstar.
How we know
The acquisition is documented by Gremlin's own 1997 press release, preserved as a scan by the Gremlin Graphics Archive after DMA developer Mike Dailly shared the original. It carries the staff numbers, the governance arrangements, and quotes from Ian Stewart and David Jones. Wireframe's oral history confirms the ownership change came before Grand Theft Auto shipped and that Gremlin honoured BMG's publishing deal, and the peer-reviewed Business History Review records the Gremlin-to-Infogrames-to-Take-Two ownership chain. The widely repeated price of 4.2 million pounds and the April date trace, so far, only to encyclopedic sources we don't cite, so we flag the figure as unverified.
Sources
- Gremlin Interactive. Gremlin Announces DMA Acquisition (original 1997 press release, Gremlin Graphics Archive scan) (1997) · Primary sourcegremlinarchive.com · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match).
- Wireframe (Raspberry Pi Press). The chaotic origins of Grand Theft Auto (Wireframe magazine, archived) (2021) · Reputable sourceweb.archive.org · The domain "web.archive.org" is on our Reputable source registry.
- Denise Tsang. Innovation in the British Video Game Industry since 1978 (Business History Review 95) (2021) · Peer-reviewedcambridge.org · Cited as a "journal" source (no stronger domain match).
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