Rockstar New England

Rockstar New England, Inc. (formerly Mad Doc Software, LLC) is an American video game developer based in the Ballardvale village within Andover, Massachusetts. The company was founded as Mad Doc Software in November 1999, by Dr. Ian Lane Davis, formerly of Activision. The company started out assisting Activision with the finalization of their Star Trek: Armada and Call to Power II games, and went on to lead the development on Star Trek: Armada II. Alongside multiple smaller projects, such as completing the cancelled Jane’s Attack Squadron from defunct Looking Glass Studios, Mad Doc Software achieved international recognition through the Empire Earth series, which it took over from Stainless Steel Studios, and the 2006 game Star Trek: Legacy. Only the final Empire Earth installment, Empire Earth III, would be critically panned, leading both Mad Doc Software and the series’ publisher, Sierra Entertainment, to retreat from the franchise.

Mad Doc Software teamed up with Rockstar Games to develop a remaster of Rockstar Vancouver‘s Bully, Bully: Scholarship Edition, which saw widespread success. Following the release, in April 2008, Rockstar Games’ parent company, Take-Two Interactive, announced that they had acquired Mad Doc Software. As part of the agreement, Mad Doc Software became part of the Rockstar Games studio umbrella, and was renamed Rockstar New England. The new company has since acted out minor roles, taking over a part of the porting duties for Grand Theft Auto IV‘s Microsoft Windows version, alongside Rockstar Toronto, and assisting other studios on the development of Rockstar Games-published titles, such as Red Dead Redemption (2010), L.A. Noire (2011), Max Payne 3 (2012) and Grand Theft Auto V (2013).