Rumor: Rockstar to Publish APB as GTA Online

I didn’t read into Realtime Worlds’ decision to buy back the rights to All Points Bulletin; it simply sounded like they wanted to have full control over the game, which I imagine is something many developers would like. But a tasty rumor has surfaced that seems too good to be true — Eurogamer has been told by what they refer to as a “credible industry source” that the reason Realtime Worlds bought back the rights to APB was so they could try to sell it to Rockstar as GTA Online.

Realtime Worlds, the developer of Crackdown, has pretty strong ties to Rockstar. It was founded by David Jones, who was formerly the founder of DMA Design, which you might recognize as the former name of the developer now known as Rockstar North, which of course developed Grand Theft Auto. Funny the way things work out, isn’t it?

When contacted, Realtime Worlds claimed they had never heard of this rumor and claimed that they reacquired the rights to APB only to “give themselves some options.” The spokesperson explained, “One of which is to launch it and support it themselves, and the other one is to look for another partner; someone else who may well be interested and have the infrastructure [to support it].”

Rockstar has yet to issue any comment on the rumor, but it’s unlikely they’ll give anything more than a classy “no comment.” We do know Rockstar is interested in a GTA MMO, so the pieces certainly seem to fit together. APB looks pretty awesome, so if that turned into GTA Online, you wouldn’t hear a complaint out of me.

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