Six former Radical Entertainment developers—Glenn Barnes, Peter Grant, Michael Gyori, Christopher Mair, Brian Thalken, and Sean Thompson—founded the company as Barking Dog Studios in May 1998.

The studio also developed Counter-Strike's "Beta 5" update (1999), Global Operations (2002), and Treasure Planet: Battle at Procyon (2002).

Rockstar Vancouver was founded as Barking Dog Studios by Glenn Barnes, Peter Grant, Michael Gyori, Christopher Mair, Brian Thalken, and Sean Thompson.

[3][4] This prompted the formation of multiple companies by employees who left Radical Entertainment, including Black Box Games.

[5] They sought a "non-corporate, non-pretentious" name during a brainstorming session and settled on one derived from the Barking Dog, a pub in California.

During this time, Barking Dog moved into Relic Entertainment's offices and had roughly 20 employees engaged in the game's development.

[12][15] In the same month, Barking Dog was rumoured to be developing a tactical first-person shooter, which Crave Entertainment announced as Global Operations in December of that year.

With music by Josh Homme and Alain Johannes of the band Queens of the Stone Age, the game was to be released in late 2005 but it was cancelled that year.

[34] Before its release, the game's name and theme attracted some controversy from politicians, parents, and activists like Jack Thompson, who regarded it as advocating for school violence.

[35][38] In October 2008, Rockstar Vancouver was rumoured to be developing a third entry in the Max Payne series created by Remedy Entertainment.

[42] In a January 2010 open letter, the wives of several Rockstar San Diego employees claimed that their spouses had regularly worked overtime and that the studio was suffering from mismanagement.