San Andreas, based on San Francisco, is one of the three original cities introduced in Grand Theft Auto. It is the second setting available to the player. The locale encompasses two landmasses: a large northern portion, which is divided into fifteen districts and generally considered to be the city's core, and a smaller island in the southeast, consisting of only one district, which acts as the city's docks area. The northern landmass is further divided by Aye Valley, which cuts through the heart of the area from the east to the west.

A reimagined version of San Andreas was featured in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (set in 1992), as a state rather than a city. Based on California and Nevada, the state encompasses two landmasses, separated by a river and surrounded by a large body of water. The southern portion of the map features the cities of Los Santos (based on Los Angeles) and San Fierro (San Francisco), separated by vast forest and mountain areas. By contrast, the northern portion is one large desert region and incorporates only one city, Las Venturas (Las Vegas). Both landmasses feature additional rural settlements, which are less inhabited than the three major cities. The cities are connected by a train track system, and each one features an airport, which can be used to fast travel from a city to another. At the beginning of the game, players only have access to Los Santos, with the rest of the map being gradually unlocked as the story progresses.

A third version of San Andreas appeared in Grand Theft Auto V (set in 2013), again imagined as a state. The game features only the southern portion of the state, which is depicted as a large island. The southern portion of the island is occupied mostly by the city of Los Santos (which resembles Los Angeles much more closely than its San Andreas counterpart), while the northern portion, known as Blaine County, is less inhabited, featuring vast areas of desert, forest, and mountain, and only a few small towns. This version of San Andreas is currently the only setting in the series that doesn't feature any map limitations, allowing players to explore the entire island at the beginning of the game. Los Angeles was extensively researched for Grand Theft Auto V. The team organised field research trips with tour guides and architectural historians and captured around 250,000 photos and hours of video footage during these visits. Since the release of the game, hundreds of in-game buildings have been identified as being based on real-world landmarks. The New Yorker's Sam Sweet notes that, with sales of the game reaching thirteen million copies, "there will be more people living in the imaginary state of Los Santos than in the real city on which it was modelled."

Vice City, based on Miami, is one of the three original cities introduced in Grand Theft Auto. It is the third setting available to the player. The city encompasses one large landmass, divided into eight districts which form the city's core, and a smaller island, Vice Beach, in the northeast. Like its real-life counterpart, Vice City is depicted as a tropical city, easily distinguished from the other two in the game by its beaches and palm trees.

A redesigned version of Vice City was introduced in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (set in 1986). The city consists of two main landmasses, Vice City Beach and Vice City Mainland, separated by a large body of water and connected to each other and to two smaller islands, Starfish Island and Prawn Island, by a series of road bridges. At the beginning of the game, the player only has access to Vice City Beach, with the rest of the city being gradually unlocked as the story progresses. The same setting would be later used in the prequel Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories (set in 1984), albeit with several changes to reflect the different time period.

A third version of Vice City will be featured as the main setting of the upcoming Grand Theft Auto VI.

The London 1969 and London 1961 expansion packs for Grand Theft Auto take place within a fictionalised version of London during the 1960s. As such, they are the only games in the series to be set outside of the United States. The portion of the city used in the games is based on Central London, although heavily condensed and mostly geographically inaccurate. It consists of two landmasses, separated by the River Thames and connected by several road bridges. A fictionalised version of Manchester is also featured in the games.

Grand Theft Auto 2 is set in Anywhere City, a fictional US retro futuristic metropolis with no apparent inspiration from any real-life city. The setting consists of three areas, which the player will switch between as the story progresses: the Downtown District, the Residential District, and the Industrial District. Each district is depicted as its own individual island. The game is set in an unspecified time period—conflicting sources suggest anything from "three weeks into the future", to the year 2013, while the game itself features several references to the "new millennium" that is coming, implying that the year is 1999.

Grand Theft Auto V features the fictional town of Ludendorff in the state of North Yankton, which is the setting of two missions and is inaccessible outside of the storyline. The 2020 update for Grand Theft Auto Online, The Cayo Perico Heist, introduced the eponymous fictional island, a "tropical paradise" off the Caribbean coast of Colombia privately owned by notorious drug lord Juan "El Rubio" Strickler. The island is used as both a transshipment base and a partying place by El Rubio, and draws inspiration from Norman's Cay and Hacienda Nápoles. Cayo Perico is the first setting in the series not located in the United States since London.

The series has included a wide variety of voice actors. The original Grand Theft Auto, its mission packs and its sequel, as well as Grand Theft Auto Advance and Chinatown Wars did not feature any voice credited to specific roles. The first game in the series to do so was Grand Theft Auto III which, despite a limited budget and the series' low profile at the time, featured several notable actors from film and television. These included Frank Vincent, Michael Madsen and Kyle MacLachlan, who all had prominent roles. At the time it was rare for a video game to use such high-profile actors, and Grand Theft Auto III is considered a pioneer in doing so. The next game, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, featured more film actors, including Ray Liotta as the player character. Although the following title, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, also featured many notable film actors—such as Samuel L. Jackson, Peter Fonda and James Woods—it had been decided that the use of such actors should be reduced, particularly for leading roles. As a result, many of the prominent roles in San Andreas were voiced by lower profile actors or rappers.

From Liberty City Stories through to Grand Theft Auto V, the series has continued using lesser known actors to voice main characters, but still uses celebrities and real-life radio personalities to voice the DJs of the many radio stations featured in each game. Some games also feature celebrities portraying themselves, such as Lazlow Jones, Phil Collins, Ricky Gervais, Katt Williams, and Dr. Dre.

According to The Guinness World Records 2008 and 2009 Gamer's Edition, it is the most controversial video game series in history, with over 4,000 articles published about it, which include accusations of glamorising violence, corrupting gamers, and connection to real life crimes.

The game was controversial from the first incarnation of the series. Grand Theft Auto was condemned in Britain, Germany, and France due to its "extreme violence", and Brazil banned it outright. Publicist Max Clifford planted sensational stories in tabloids in order to help sell the first game.

The controversies flared up again with Grand Theft Auto III, since the 3D graphics made the violence more realistic, and players could pay for the services of prostitutes to restore their health, and if they wished, kill them to get some of their money back.

There is also criticism from the focus on illegal activities in comparison with traditional "heroic" roles that other games offer. The main character can commit a wide variety of crimes and violent acts while dealing with only temporary consequences, including the killing of policemen and military personnel.

The sixth 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 criticised 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" said by character "Diaz" during an altercation between the player and a Haitian gang. After the threat of a lawsuit by the Haitian-American Grassroots Coalition, Rockstar removed the word "Haitians" from this phrase in the game's subtitles.

San Andreas was criticised initially due to its "gangster" elements, which include drugs, prostitution, and murder. It later received additional criticism after the discovery of an interactive sex minigame, nicknamed Hot Coffee; initially cut from the game, it remained in the game code, and was discovered in both the console and Windows versions of the game.

After the release of San Andreas, modders managed to find the unused code in the game and released unofficial patches for the Windows and Xbox (with a modchip) versions as well as a PlayStation 2 version through the use of an Action Replay code enabling the player to engage in these sexual mini-games (dubbed "Hot Coffee" in reference to a euphemism for sex used in the game). These mini-games were left partially intact in the game's code. This prompted application of an AO (Adults Only) ESRB rating to the version of the game containing the leftover code. Take-Two Interactive was forced to re-release the game in order to restore the M (Mature) rating. A class action lawsuit against Take-Two was also filed as a result of the "Hot Coffee" code.

One of the controversies involved with this game was Mothers Against Drunk Driving's (MADD) criticism of the ability to drink and drive as a new feature. MADD had even requested ESRB to change the rating of the game from "M" for ages seventeen and up to "AO", for adults only, because they felt it was inappropriate for children, even at the age of seventeen, to experience drunk driving in such a manner. In the final game, drunk driving is a playable event, but it is a crime that automatically generates a wanted rating and main playable character Niko Bellic loudly (and drunkenly) proclaims that it is a "bad idea" and that he "should know better".

Notably, it is impossible to drive while drunk in the GTA IV expansions, The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony. These were released after the criticism. It is, however, possible to drive drunk again in the successor, Grand Theft Auto V.

The Lost and Damned expansion pack for Grand Theft Auto IV was condemned by US parents group Common Sense Media who issued a public warning against the pack's content due to a full-frontal nudity scene during one of the cutscenes. They claimed the game was "more controversial than its predecessors" because it featured "full frontal male nudity".

There has been some controversy over a drug dealing minigame along with comments that some Nintendo games are being aimed at children (despite the fact that the game was rated Mature). The drug dealing mini-game allows players to peddle six types of drugs around the city, but the profit the player makes depends on market conditions, which will be based on the area in which they deal, and the level of regular service this area receives from them.

A segment in the latest instalment caused controversy for scenes containing player-initiated torture. The mission "By the Book" features graphic depictions of kneecapping, electrocution, dental extraction and waterboarding, and the player is required to perform an act of torture in order to progress in the game.

UK-based charity Freedom from Torture publicly condemned the use of torture scenes in Grand Theft Auto V. The organisation, who works to rehabilitate survivors of torture, joined other human rights charities who were outraged at a torture scene in the game in which the players have to pull teeth and electrocute an unarmed man in order to extract information. The charity's CEO Keith Best stated: "Rockstar North has crossed a line by effectively forcing people to take on the role of a torturer and perform a series of unspeakable acts if they want to achieve success in the game."

The game has also been accused of sexism. The Los Angeles Times considered the game's satirical portrayals of women uncreative, and added that violent and sexist themes hurt the game experience. Edge noted that while "every female in the game exists solely to be sneered, leered or laughed at", it treated its all-male lead characters in a similar vein through their stereotyped tendencies towards violence. Sam Houser, Rockstar Games co-founder, felt that the development team sometimes overlooked their portrayal of women in Grand Theft Auto games, but that the weight towards male characters "fit with the story we wanted to tell".

Several celebrities have sued Rockstar Games and/or Take-Two Interactive for purportedly violating their intellectual property or personality rights, including hip-hop artist Daz Dillinger, Karen Gravano of Mob Wives, and actress Lindsay Lohan.

Former lawyer Jack Thompson has been involved in a number of attempts to get families of murder victims to hold the Grand Theft Auto series accountable for the death of their loved ones. Due to his conduct in this and related cases, Thompson was disbarred in 2008 and was fined more than $100,000 by the Florida Bar Association.

On 20 October 2003, the families of Aaron Hamel and Kimberly Bede, two young people shot by teens William and Josh Buckner (who in statements to investigators claimed their actions were inspired by Grand Theft Auto III) filed a US$246 million lawsuit against publishers Rockstar Games, Take-Two Interactive Software, retailer Walmart, and PlayStation 2 manufacturer Sony Computer Entertainment America. Rockstar and its parent company, Take-Two, filed for dismissal of the lawsuit, stating in US District Court on 29 October 2003 that the "ideas and concepts as well as the 'purported psychological effects' on the Buckners are protected by the First Amendment's free-speech clause". The lawyer of the victims, Jack Thompson, denied that, but failed in his attempt to move the lawsuit into a state court and under Tennessee's consumer protection act. Two days later, the plaintiffs filed a Notice of Voluntary Dismissal, and the case was closed.

In February 2005, a lawsuit was brought upon the makers and distributors of the Grand Theft Auto series claiming the games caused a teenager to shoot and kill three members of the Alabama police force. The shooting took place in June 2003 when Devin Moore, 17 years old at the time, was taken in for questioning by police in Fayette, Alabama, regarding a stolen vehicle. Moore then grabbed a pistol from one of the police officers and shot and killed him along with another officer and dispatcher before fleeing in a police car. One of Moore's attorneys, Jack Thompson, claimed it was Grand Theft Auto's graphic nature—with his constant playing time—that caused Moore to commit the murders, and Moore's family agrees. Damages were being sought from branches of GameStop and Wal-Mart in Jasper, Alabama, the stores from which Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, respectively, were purchased and also from the games' publisher Take-Two Interactive, and the PlayStation 2 manufacturer Sony Computer Entertainment. On 29 March 2006 the case was dismissed and permission to appeal was denied.

In May 2005, Jack Thompson appeared via satellite on the Glenn Beck program on CNN's Headline News. Thompson mentioned Devin Moore and said, regarding Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, "There's no doubt in my mind [...] that but for Devin Moore's training on this cop killing simulator, he would not have been able to kill three cops in Fayette, Alabama, who are now dead and in the ground. We are suing Take-Two, Sony, Wal-Mart, and GameStop for having trained Devin Moore to kill. He had no history of violence. No criminal record."

In September 2006, Thompson brought another lawsuit, claiming that Cody Posey played the game obsessively before murdering his father Delbert Paul Posey, stepmother Tryone Schmid, and stepsister Marilea Schmid on a ranch in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The suit was filed on behalf of the victims' families. The suit alleged that were it not for his obsessive playing of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, the murders would not have taken place. Named in the suit were Cody Posey, Rockstar Games, Take-Two Interactive, and Sony. The suit asked for US$600 million in damages. During the criminal trial, Posey's defence team argued he was abused by his father, and tormented by his stepmother. Posey was also taking Zoloft at the time of the killings. The lawsuit was dismissed in December 2007.

Modding of Grand Theft Auto content, either within Grand Theft Auto games or recreated via other software, has been generally performed by the player community since around the early 2000s, with one of the first major conversions being the recreation of Grand Theft Auto III's Liberty City within the game engine running Vice City. Around 2017, Take Two began taking action against these mods, specifically issuing a cease & desist letter to the makers of OpenIV, a piece of software that allowed players to alter content from Grand Theft Auto IV and V. Take-Two said at the time that its issue was not directly with the mod itself, but that it "enables recent malicious mods that allow harassment of players and interfere with the GTA Online experience for everybody", and that it was working with OpenIV to find an amenable solution. OpenIV developers opted to remove the mod from circulation after several rounds of discussion with Take-Two. Take-Two issued a statement to clarify that it would not take action against single-player mods; this statement was updated in 2019 to exclude modders from including other Take-Two intellectual property or from "making new games, stories, missions, or maps".

The Grand Theft Auto modding community worked under this response to continue to build mods and other content within the bounds set by Take-Two. In February 2021, Take-Two, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), issued a takedown request for two projects hosted on GitHub that had reverse-engineered the game engines for Grand Theft Auto III and Vice City, asserting that such reverse-engineering was disallowed by the game's End User License Agreement. On 10 June 2021, the project developers filed a counter-notice; per DMCA rules regarding disputes, the source code was restored after two weeks. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick stated the company has a "pretty flexible" view on user mods, asserting that "if the economy is threatened, or if there's bad behaviour, and we know how to define that, then we would issue a takedown notice". However, the company proceeded to continue to file a lawsuit in California against the programmers behind this effort in September 2021, asserting that the programmers "are well aware that they do not possess the right to copy, adapt, or distribute derivative GTA source code, or the audiovisual elements of the games, and that doing so constitutes copyright infringement." As part of the lawsuit, Take-Two issued another takedown notice to GitHub to remove the mods in October 2021. The modders, in their legal reply, asserted that use of the assets were within fair use, as the reverse-engineered versions were transformative in nature and, as neither Rockstar nor Take Two had issued any updates for years, did not harm the commercial prospects of the games.

Ever since the release of Grand Theft Auto III in 2001, the Grand Theft Auto series has been a major success, both critically and financially. It has shipped more than 425 million units, making it one of the best-selling video game franchises of all time.

In 2006, Grand Theft Auto was voted one of Britain's top 10 designs in the Great British Design Quest organised by the BBC and the Design Museum. The game appeared in a list of British design icons which included Concorde, Jaguar E-Type, Aston Martin DB5, Mini, World Wide Web, Tomb Raider, K2 telephone box, London tube map, AEC Routemaster bus and the Supermarine Spitfire.

The series has broken several records, resulting in Guinness World Records awarding the series 10 world records in the Gamer's Edition 2008. These records include Most Guest Stars in a Video Game Series, Largest Voice Cast in a Video Game (Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas), Largest In-Game Soundtrack (Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas) as well as Most Successful Entertainment Launch of All Time (Grand Theft Auto V). Guinness World Records also ranked Grand Theft Auto in third place on their list of top 50 console games of all time based on initial impact and lasting legacy. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is listed as the most successful game on the PlayStation 2 according to The Guinness World Records 2009 Gamer's Edition.

Grand Theft Auto III, San Andreas and Vice City currently lie at the 2nd, 5th and 6th highest rated PlayStation 2 games on Metacritic, respectively, while Chinatown Wars is rated the best game on the Nintendo DS and the second best on the PlayStation Portable, and Grand Theft Auto IV is currently rated the second best game ever, with a score of 98, only trailing behind The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Also, Vice City and Grand Theft Auto V lie at 11th and 2nd best PC games of all time, on Metacritic. Along with this, The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony are currently placed 35th and 59th in the top Xbox 360 games.

The release of Grand Theft Auto III is treated as a major event in the history of video games, considered a revolutionary title in the medium, much like the release of Doom nearly a decade earlier.

During interviews to mark the 10th anniversary of the release of Grand Theft Auto III, producer of the Street Fighter series, Yoshinori Ono, said "It would be no exaggeration to say that Grand Theft Auto III changed the industry, and we can basically separate the time before and after its emergence as distinct eras." In the same article Bethesda Game Studios director, Todd Howard, said "The mark of a truly great game is how many people try to recapture or emulate it and fail. There's a long line behind this one."

Subsequent games that follow this formula of driving and shooting have been called "Grand Theft Auto clones". Some reviewers even extended this label to the Driver series, even though this series began years before the release of Grand Theft Auto III. Grand Theft Auto clones are a type of 3D action-adventure game, where players are given the ability to drive any vehicle or fire any weapon as they explore an open world. These games often incorporate violent and criminal themes. Notable games that are comparable to Grand Theft Auto are Saints Row, Scarface: The World Is Yours, True Crime: Streets of LA, Watch Dogs, Sleeping Dogs, Just Cause, Mafia and The Godfather.

• GTA gang

• Garrelts, Nate (2006). The Meaning and Culture of Grand Theft Auto. Jefferson, North Carolina, United States: McFarland. ISBN 9780786428229.
• Kushner, David (2012). Jacked: The Outlaw Story of Grand Theft Auto. Hoboken, New Jersey, United States: Wiley. ISBN 978-0470936375.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Grand Theft Auto (series).

• Official website