Controversy

Critics have targeted the exploitative and violent attitude toward women in the series. Although not encouraged to do so in any of the games, players may utilize the services of prostitutes, and then subsequently rob and murder them.

The Grand Theft Auto series has been a source of considerable controversy since the release of Grand Theft Auto III. Some controversy can be attributed to publicist Max Clifford, who planted sensational stories in tabloids in order to help sell the game^[10].

The fourth game in the series, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, also came under criticism. One mission in particular, in which the player must instigate a gang war between Haitian and Cuban gangs, has been controversial. Haitian and Cuban anti-defamation groups criticized the game. Jean-Robert Lafortune of the Haitian American Grassroots Coalition is quoted as saying that "The game shouldn't be designed to destroy human life, it shouldn't be designed to destroy an ethnic group," for this and similar scenarios, including lines in the game's script such as "kill the Haitian dickheads" during an altercation between the player and a Haitian gang. After the threat for having been sued by the Haitian-American Grassroots Coalition, Rockstar removed the word "Haitians" from this phrase in the game's subtitles.

More recently, four teens in New York decided to go on a Grand Theft Auto inspired crime spree. The three teens beat and robbed a man outside of a New Hyde Park supermarket. They then went to a train station, encountering other teens they know from their high school and recruiting them. The mob, now numbering six, armed themselves with a baseball bat, a broomstick and a crowbar. They stopped a woman driving a black car, stole her cigarettes, then her car. They then smashed a van with the baseball bat they carried. Both the driver of the BMW as well as the van called the police, and the teens were arrested shortly after.