Long before Grand Theft Auto VI became one of the most anticipated video games in history, its predecessors were finished the old-fashioned way: by having the development team sit down and play them from start to finish, hunting for bugs before the game was locked for manufacturing.

That is according to Obbe Vermeij, who served as Rockstar North’s technical director from 1995 to 2009 and is credited on Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City, San Andreas and GTA IV. In a recent post on X, reported by Notebookcheck, Vermeij described a studio tradition known internally as ‘pencils down.’

A two-week final exam for the whole team

Fun fact: We used to have ‘pencils down’ 2 weeks before going gold. Then we’d all play through the game to find the last bugs.

‘Going gold’ refers to the point at which a game’s code is finalised and sent for mass production, a milestone that in the era before digital patching left little room for error. According to Vermeij, this two-week testing window held throughout the development period spanning GTA III to GTA IV, roughly 2001 to 2008.

Vermeij also pushed back on assumptions about what making the games was actually like day to day. He described a workplace of separate departments, art, code and music, each largely working in isolation with headphones on for eight-hour shifts and comparatively few meetings.

Working on GTA 3, Vice City, SA, and GTA 4 was more like a regular job than people imagine.

He said only a small group of people made the major calls on gameplay and story, meaning the final ‘pencils down’ playthrough was often the first time most staff experienced the completed narrative in order.

Why the anecdotes now

Vermeij left Rockstar North in June 2009 following the release of GTA IV. In November 2023 he briefly ran a blog called ‘Inside Rockstar North,’ sharing similar development stories, but took it down himself after, in his words, it ‘annoyed’ his former colleagues, according to ComicBook.com. He has said there was no legal threat or contact from Rockstar’s New York studio over the blog, and he has continued posting occasional anecdotes on X since.

It is not known whether Rockstar still uses a ‘pencils down’ style process for GTA VI, which the studio has said is being finished ‘with the level of polish’ fans expect. Rockstar delayed the game from an earlier 2025 target and has confirmed a release date of Thursday, November 19, 2026.

As one of the most delayed and scrutinised launches in gaming history approaches, Vermeij’s account offers a rare, if dated, glimpse into how a studio famous for its scale and secrecy once handled the final, unglamorous stretch of finishing a Grand Theft Auto game.

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