The Biggest Scandals Associated with Rockstar and GTA

GTA has always had a scandalous reputation. Starting with the third part, Rockstar offers to create real mayhem in a very realistic city, with hundreds of corpses, explosions and destruction of the police. Of course, such a format attracts the attention of people who are looking for scandals and reasons for new bans. We will tell you about their actions, as well as other resonant stories related to Grand Theft Auto, in this article.

"Excessive violence" in the very first GTA. Black PR is also PR

Rockstar sought scandalous fame back in the days of the original Grand Theft Auto in 1997. It made an agreement with publicist Max Clifford, who was known as an experienced PR man. The man in his articles spoke in detail about how cruel the original GTA was. After that, publications began in other media, on radio and television, which interpreted Clifford's words in their own way. Later, even politicians got involved. It turned out exactly what the publishers wanted — their project was noticed. However, there were some negative consequences. For example, the game was banned in Brazil and was not allowed to be sold in the UK for a long time.

In 2012, Max said that he did not remember anything about the Grand Theft Auto scandal. For him, this story was one of many in his career. Clifford's story ended sadly — he was arrested on charges of sexual crimes and died of a heart attack 5 years later. Rockstar left a reference to him in GTA Online. It featured the artificial intelligence Cliffford, who controlled an army of cyborgs. According to the plot, he was disconnected from the servers at the end of 2017. Max Clifford himself died in prison on December 10 of the same year.

GTA 3 as a textbook for future criminals

The third GTA was released a month and a half after the September 11 terrorist attack. Let us recall that the events of the game also took place in New York, although it was called Liberty City. Fortunately, the developers managed to cut out the particularly brutal missions for Darkel, which resembled terror against the civilian population. So Rockstar avoided a major scandal.

But trouble came a year after the release. In 2002, 15-year-old Dustin Lynch killed a girl. Attorney Jack Thompson claimed that the reason for the crime was the guy's passion for the third Grand Theft Auto. He even wanted to represent the interests of the killer in court, but his mother refused Jack's services. Dustin was found sane and is still serving his sentence in prison.

Jack Thompson vs. Rockstar

Since we touched on the name of Jack Thompson, it is worth talking about him separately. This lawyer began his activity with accusations against leading radio stations, rap artists and even prosecutors. But he was most active in criticizing video games. Jack compared Sony to the second Pearl Harbor, called shooters murder simulators, and vibration in gamepads — a reward for taking a person's life.

Jack also participated in many cases involving Rockstar games. Notable examples:

1. February 2003. The case of Dustin Lynch, who killed JoLynn Mishne. According to Thompson, GTA 3 was to blame. We told you about this story above.
2. October 2003. After teenage stepbrothers took a person's life, Jack again called Rockstar to account. This time, he participated in the trial and demanded $246 million from the publisher of the third GTA. The case related to this lawsuit was closed.
3. July 2004. After Warren Leblanc killed his friend Stefan Pakeerah, police mistakenly reported finding a copy of the original Manhunt in the killer's home. However, the deceased actually had the game. But that didn't stop Jack from joining the case, claiming that such projects inspire future killers. Pakeerah's family hired Thompson to get £50 million in a wrongful death case. The lawsuit was dismissed.
4. March 2005. Devin Moore was charged with the murder of police officers, for which he was sentenced to death. During the trial, Jack Thompson demanded a complete ban on the distribution of GTA games, because they allow you to shoot at law enforcement officers. During the trial, the lawyer threatened the jury in letters. As a result, Jack was removed from the trial because he "turned it into a circus" (verbatim quote). The police murders were never linked to Grand Theft Auto.
5. 2005. Jack demanded that the game Bully not be allowed to be sold. He filed a lawsuit against the largest distributors demanding that they not sell this project to Rockstar. The judge studied the gameplay and found no reason to further restrict the distribution of Bully.
6. September 2006. Cody Posey shot his father, stepmother, and stepsister, then buried them under a blanketheat in a heap. Jack, along with another lawyer Steven Sanders, blamed everything on GTA: Vice City. According to them, the game taught the guy to kill, and if it weren't for it, all three victims would have survived. However, Thompson's arguments seemed unconvincing to Gary Mitchell, Cody's current lawyer.

In addition, Jack demanded a ban on Manhunt 2, criticized retail chains for selling GTA games to minors, and much more. As a result, Take-Two sued Thompson himself, demanding that he be prohibited from filing lawsuits related to the company that could affect the sales of its games. As a result, an agreement was signed, according to which Jack will no longer participate in such events.

The story ended with the court depriving Thompson of his law license in June 2008 without the right to reinstate it. Of course, this did not stop the man who in 2013 threw accusations at GTA 5. Interestingly, by today he has completely changed his position and speaks about video games in a positive way.

Haitian mafia and psychics in GTA: Vice City

The plot of Vice City featured a confrontation between Cuban and Haitian bandits. Representatives of the second nation were unhappy with how their compatriots were shown in the game. They sued Rockstar, accusing the developers of racism. This time, the GTA creators agreed with the plaintiffs' demands and replaced the Haitians with "gangsters." The problem is that the issue was only resolved in 2017, so the Steam version of Vice City had to be fixed. By that time, most players were spending their time in GTA Online or SAMP.

That same year, Psychic Readers Network, the creators of a show about psychics, were outraged that Auntie Poly, the head of the Haitian mafia, was too similar to Miss Cleo from their show. Both characters were played by actress Yuri Harris, who had already received a fee for the voice acting. Of course, the case against Rockstar was lost.

Hot Coffee in GTA: San Andreas

Rockstar wanted to add a mini-game related to sex to San Andreas even at the development stage. However, we did not see it in the final version of the project on PlayStation 2. We only learned about this mechanic in 2005, after the release on PC. Then it turned out that sex with girls was invented by Rockstar itself, and the Hot Coffee mod only unlocks this feature. There was talk about assigning the game the highest rating AO ("Adults Only"), which deprived it of the possibility of sale in large supermarkets. And some countries, for example, Australia, completely banned San Andreas from distribution.

Rockstar responded quickly — all unsold copies of the game were withdrawn, and instead a new version of the project with the cut sex mechanics appeared on store shelves. The patch was called Cold Coffee. Note that this happened only in the second half of 2005, almost a year after the start of sales. Therefore, the scandal did not prevent San Andreas from becoming one of the most successful games in history.

Stars and daughters of mafia figures against Rockstar

You probably heard that after the release of the GTA 6 trailer, the Florida Joker turned against the developers. This petty criminal was unhappy that one of the guys in the video looked too much like him. But this is far from the only example of specific people speaking out against their appearance or creativity being used in Rockstar games. Specific examples:

• Rapper Daz Dillinger sued Rockstar for using his songs Nothin' But the Cavi Hit and C-Walk. During the development stage, he was contacted and offered to pay a little over four thousand dollars, but the musician refused. In the end, his compositions still made it into the final version of the game. However, his absurd demand for the complete withdrawal of all copies of GTA 5 was not fulfilled. Perhaps Rockstar eventually came to an agreement with him.
• Karen Gravano, the daughter of mafioso Salvatore Gravano, demanded $40 million from Rockstar for the resemblance to Antonio Bottino. According to her, the character's storyline resembles her own story, which she wanted to release as an autobiography. But at the time of the release of Grand Theft Auto 5, it had not yet come out. How the game's scriptwriters found out about everything before the book was published remains unknown. Karen failed to convince the judge. In addition, Take-Two representatives stated that Antonio Bottino is much slimmer than Ms. Gravano.
• Actress Lindsay Lohan sued Rockstar because the game's heroine, Lacey Jonas, looks like her. After the lawsuit was dismissed, the girl filed another one. This time, she drew attention to the blonde in the official art, who was allegedly copied from the actress. Invet it was stated that the prototype was the model Shelby Welinder. Lindsay also lost the second case.

Rockstar vs. modders

All the previous stories might seem absurd to you. In fairness, we note that Rockstar itself sometimes behaves strangely. A striking example is the publisher's fight against modders. Back in 2017, Take-Two demanded that OpenIV, which was used to create modifications for the fifth part, be closed.

In 2021, a wave of major mods were removed from all known sites, from Nexus to LibertyCity, where you are reading these lines. For example, the distribution of GTA: Underground was banned, within which the third part, Vice City, San Andreas, the Manhunt and Bully dilogy were combined into one open world. In addition, Rockstar fought against home-made remasters of the classics. The reasons for such actions became clear in October, when Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy — The Definitive Edition was announced. The problem is that the official re-release turned out to be much worse than the fan creations.

Of course, we have only talked about the biggest scandals. We can also recall the petitions to ban GTA 5 because it allows you to kill women, the indignation of opponents of torture, aggressive statements by the mayor of New York and the head of the Scottish city of Hawick, which is referenced in the fifth part, and much more. Obviously, Rockstar is not afraid of conflicts and is ready to answer for its actions. In addition, they have professional lawyers on their side who tell the developers what they can and cannot do.

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