While making its sequel, Blood Money, Jones dropped out, hired several of his friends—including Mike Dailly, Steve Hammond, and Russell Kay, whom he had met at the Kingsway Amateur Computer Club—and opened the company's first offices above a former fish and chip shop in 1989.

Following the successful 1991 release of Lemmings, the studio rapidly expanded and moved into proper offices, after which Kay left to establish Visual Sciences.

Although the company was best known for producing watches, the Dundee factory also built home computers for Sinclair Research, including the ZX81 and ZX Spectrum, which had boosted interest in hobbyist programming in the area.

[3][5] Timex employees could buy subsidised ZX Spectrum units, and the company paid for programming courses at the local Kingsway Technical College.

[3][4] During their time at the KACC, Dailly and Hammond developed Freek Out for the Commodore Plus/4, which they finished and sold to the publisher Cascade for "a modest fee", while Jones and Kay cooperated on Moonshadow for the ZX Spectrum, which was eventually released as Zone Trooper.

[3] Jones accepted a voluntary redundancy for £3,000, a roughly half-year salary that he invested into an Amiga 1000, and subsequently enrolled in computer science at the Dundee Institute of Technology (DIT).

[6] The game featured graphics by the demoscene member Tony Smith, with whom he communicated by post, and sounds Dailly and Hammond recorded from a Salamander machine at a local arcade.

[3][10] At the Personal Computer World Show trade event, Jones met with representatives of several publishers—including Gremlin Graphics, Hewson Consultants, Ocean Software, and the nascent Psygnosis—to demonstrate CopperCon1.

[3][6] While working on a sequel to Menace, the difficulty of Jones's university programme spiked, leading him to drop out and pursue game development full-time, against the advice of his professors.

[2][3] Gary Timmons joined the studio shortly after the game was completed, while Dailly developed its Commodore 64 version and began working on a PC Engine port of Shadow of the Beast for Psygnosis.

was shelved due to technical restrictions of the Amiga at the time and the platformer Cutiepoo did not make adequate progress after one year of work by the freelance programmer Tony Colgan.

[17] As Kay left DMA Design in 1993 to form Visual Sciences, Jones and Dailly hired Keith Hamilton as a replacement and put him in charge of All New World of Lemmings.

[32] In the same year, Psygnosis released Walker, which remained exclusive to the Amiga, and Hired Guns, which had been created principally by Scott Johnston with a story by Hammond.

[29] In another project, Psygnosis briefly had DMA Design emulate an in-development Star Wars game on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES).

[35] During one trade show, Jones caught the attention of Nintendo with a full-motion video Star Wars clip running on the SNES, something previously believed impossible.

[33][38] Using these funds, the studio grew to occupy 2,500 square feet (230 m2) of office space at the Dundee Technology Park and spent around £250,000 outfitting all rooms with high-end devices.

[42] The publishing agreement with BMG Interactive covered Race'n'Chase, Space Station Silicon Valley, Tanktics, and Covert, the latter a stealth game in the style of Metal Gear.

[32] As such, the team was highly unorganised and struggled with the development until Gary Penn moved from BMG Interactive to DMA Design as the game's creative director and producer.

[42] Also in 1997, DMA Design became one of the founding members of the Scottish Game Alliance, alongside Creative Edge, Digital Animations, Inner Workings, Red Lemon Studios, VIS Interactive, and Visual Sciences.

[1][66] In the lead-up to the debut of Race'n'Chase, now renamed Grand Theft Auto, BMG Interactive hired the publicist Max Clifford, who wanted to use controversy to market the game.

[69][71] Through the acquisition, Take-Two also obtained the intellectual property of Grand Theft Auto and Space Station Silicon Valley, and it published the former's PlayStation version in North America later that year.

[46] In March 1999, after less than two years on the stock market, the poor sales of Body Harvest contributed to dire financials at Gremlin Interactive that forced it into a £24 million takeover by the French publisher Infogrames.

[76] During these ownership and managerial changes, several projects were cancelled, including Attack!, Grand Theft Auto and Wild Metal Country for the Nintendo 64, and an Unreal version for the 64DD.

[79][80] Shortly thereafter, DMA Design established a satellite studio in the Leith area of Edinburgh to house the former teams of Body Harvest and Space Station Silicon Valley.

[89] During the development of Grand Theft Auto III, DMA Design again expanded rapidly, forming a core team of 20 people and engaging "dozens more" in some capacity.

Vice City reused its predecessor's engine, such that the programmers were not engaged until six months before the end of the production, and lessons learned from the previous development cycle allowed the designers to plan features more efficiently.

[102] Due to its dark tone and focus on realistic violence, it was considered the studio's pet project, and most people at Rockstar Games wanted no part in it.

[104][105] Rockstar North's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was given one year of additional development time over Vice City, which allowed the team to rework core parts of the gameplay and visuals.

[134] The New York Supreme Court partially dismissed Benzies's lawsuit in April 2018 because the profit-sharing agreement did not guarantee equal pay for the Rockstar Principals, although he remained entitled to some royalties.

[138] Take-Two later accused Benzies of poaching employees from Rockstar North for his newer studio, Royal Circus Games, and argued that the company's name and trademark had been deliberately chosen to have consumers confuse the two entities.