Rockstar Games is expanding in Ontario by consolidating its Vancouver offices here.

Rockstar Toronto, which is based in Oakville, will add a new facility and at least 50 new positions, including potentially taking the 35 jobs displaced from the Rockstar Vancouver office.

Rockstar is considered one of the top game developers in the world, creating titles such as the Grand Theft Auto series, L.A. Noire, Bully and more.

The consolidation occurred with financial support from the province of Ontario, which offered $2 million in grants to Rockstar. Other financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“Expanding Rockstar Toronto and bringing our Canadian development talent together under one roof underscores our commitment to building world-class teams that can make the kind of groundbreaking entertainment experiences Rockstar Games is known for,” said Jennifer Kolbe, vice-president of publishing and operations for Rockstar Games, in a news release.

“We believe a single Canadian team will make for a powerful creative force on future projects.”

It is another high profile get for Ontario, as it continues to entice big name developers here with financial support and tax incentives. Rockstar is the second big name game developer lured to Toronto in the past few years, following Ubisoft Toronto, which was offered $230 million in tax incentives and credits, with plans to have 800 staff at the end of its first decade.

With more than 850 developers located in Ontario, the video game industry generates $1 billion in revenues annually and employs roughly 16,000 people. Ontario has many smaller game developer, but lags in big name studios compared to Quebec and British Columbia.

“I think it’s obviously showing that Ontario can attract companies in this space and I think we’ve got a very strong industry already, but the government is making a real effort to try to continue to grow the industry in Ontario,” says Donald Henderson, president and CEO of Interactive Ontario, a not-for-profit digital media trade organization.

“The (province) has got the right approach; they’ve obviously looked at the Quebec experience, the Montreal experience, and are doing similar things. . . . It’s been a growing industry in Ontario for years.

“It’s a little bit of a different ecosystem, there are a lot of smaller companies, indie developers, here in Toronto. Montreal is very much driven by console development, that’s what Rockstar does here in Toronto. I also think that the historic base for Toronto, with film and television for Canada centred here, provides certain opportunities to even grow the business, even perhaps beyond games.”

Rockstar Toronto was initially founded in 1999 as Rockstar Canada and created the The Warriors PSP game. It has worked on many of the company’s games, often helping to port them to other systems after their initial launch. The company changed its name to Rockstar Toronto after the parent company bought Barking Dog Studios in 2002, creating Rockstar Vancouver. That subsidiary most recently worked on Max Payne 3.

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While the news is a gain for Ontario’s industry, it’s more bad news for Vancouver development, which recently saw Activision shutter Radical Entertainment, that province’s oldest game company, after sales of their most recent release, Prototype 2, disappointed.

Affected employees at Rockstar Vancouver will be given the opportunity to be relocate to the Toronto office or positions at the developer’s other studios around the world.

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