You don’t become one of the biggest, most profitable media franchises in human history without stepping on a few toes, especially when there’s literally a violent felony in your name.
“Grand Theft Auto” was destined to collide with controversy. Lawsuits, international incidents, and full-on moral panics have followed in the wake of the series’ unparalleled success. And while there’s often a kernel of truth to some concerns raised over the violent, over-the-top nature of GTA, advocacy groups and opportunists have spent decades disingenuously trying to take one of gaming’s greatest series down before it warps the fragile little minds of our children.
Anything with as much cultural significance as GTA can have an influence on someone, maybe even a bad one, but study after study after study has failed to find any link between playing violent video games and antisocial behavior in the real world. That hasn’t stopped opponents from attacking the series since pretty much day one. These are Grand Theft Auto’s biggest controversies.
1. Top Down Trouble
Back in 1997, we were just emerging from the first real video game moral panic (it was mostly about Mortal Kombat). Violence and vulgarity was the cultural vibe, with transgressive content pitched against the moral majority in a war for our attention and our souls. In Scotland, DMA Design – the studio that just made Lemmings – was about to release its next title: a top-down driving game called Grand Theft Auto.
The word was already out months before release: this is a game where you do crime. UK tabloids like the Daily Mail ran lurid headlines describing all of the anarchy allowed by the “criminal computer game that glorifies hit-and-run thugs,” while members of Parliament, such as Lord Campbell of Croy, warned that there’d be no way to stop kids from getting their impressionable little hands on it.
The Right Honorable Lord might have been sincere in his convictions, but as it turned out, he was playing right into DMA’s hands. The studio’s publisher, multimedia giant BMG, was used to creating buzz for their transgressive music acts like the Sex Pistols, and was more than happy to lean into the sleazy side of GTA. It hired a publicist who leaked details to newspapers and used a whisper network to make sure that certain pearl-clutching politicians were aware of the upcoming crime simulator. Then, they launched a radio campaign featuring clips from the House of Lords debate that made the game sound completely awesome.
Grand Theft Auto was a big success, despite its 18+ rating and the fact that it was banned in Brazil. It sold over three million copies by 1999. Grand Theft Auto’s first brush with infamy might have been manufactured, but it taught DMA and, later, Rockstar a valuable lesson: a little controversy can create a lot of cash.
2. Grand Theft Thompson
In the wake of the 1999 Columbine High School mass shooting, critics pointed fingers at Doom rather than grappling with the real causes. The moral panic was in full swing when Grand Theft Auto 3 and its revolutionary, more “realistic” 3D depiction of crime hit the scene, and one man pounced on the opportunity to make himself part of its story.
Jack Thompson is a conservative attorney and activist who spent over a decade waging an obnoxious war on the industry. He was a frequent talking head on cable news, constantly blaming video games for real world violent crimes. He’s gone after a lot of different titles over the years, but he had a particular axe to grind with Rockstar.
Thompson hounded the franchise for years with lawsuits and TV hits accusing GTA of inspiring horrific tragedies. He frequently sued Rockstar’s owner, Take-Two Interactive, as well as retail stores selling GTA and Sony for making the consoles it could be played on. His clients were typically family members of the victims of violent crimes, and he usually demanded outrageous amounts of money. His most high-profile case involved Devin Moore, a man in Alabama who was convicted of killing three police officers in 2005. Thompson filed a suit alleging that it was his obsession with GTA that caused him to snap.
The Moore case gave Thompson a national platform for his one-man vendetta against Rockstar, and cable news was happy to give him a soapbox. It was a big enough deal that the BBC made a movie about it in 2015. Rockstar called it “random, made up bollocks.” IGN gave it a 4.5/10. But the case was extremely flimsy and quickly dismissed. Thompson wound up in trouble with the Alabama bar as a result of his behavior, something that would become a theme throughout his career.
Thompson was undeterred by his losses, but concerns about GTA’s violence were soon drowned out by an even more lurid scandal. GTA is, after all, about America. As a nation, we have an unfortunate tendency to give brutality a pass, but we lose our minds when bro asks his date inside for some hot coffee.
3. Hot Coffee
Following the revolutionary design of GTA 3 and Vice City, anticipation for San Andreas was through the roof. At Rockstar, designer Sam Houser didn’t want to disappoint fans who expected the franchise to push even more boundaries.
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