Take-Two buys DMA Design for one pound
The GTA studio changes hands for £1.00 and twelve million dollars of debt
Quick facts
- Price
- £1.00
- Assumed debt
- About $12.3 million
- Ownership chain
- Gremlin, then Infogrames, then Take-Two
- In the filing's words
- The developer of the Grand Theft Auto series
What happened
Two years of corporate pass-the-parcel ended in September 1999: Take-Two, already owner of the Grand Theft Auto copyright and the Rockstar label, acquired DMA Design itself. The terms, recorded in Take-Two's own annual report, are among the strangest in the industry's history: all outstanding stock of DMA Design Holdings for exactly one pound, plus roughly 12.3 million dollars of assumed debt. The filing describes what Take-Two was really buying in seven words: the developer of the Grand Theft Auto series. DMA had reached its third owner in three years, by way of Gremlin and the French publisher Infogrames, and this one would stick.
Why it matters
The one-pound price tells the whole story of DMA's Gremlin years: a studio whose flagship was about to define a genre was carrying so much debt it changed hands for the cost of a chocolate bar. Under Take-Two, developer and publisher of GTA finally sat under one roof.
How we know
The price, the assumed debt, and the September 1999 date come from Take-Two's fiscal 1999 annual report, filed with the SEC. Wireframe's oral history documents the ownership chain that led there, from Gremlin to Infogrames to Take-Two.
Sources
- Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc.. Take-Two Interactive annual report (10-K) for fiscal year 1999, filed January 2000 (SEC EDGAR) (2000) · Primary source (author-declared)sec.gov · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- 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. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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