By Mohamed Elgayar
Introduction
With over 100 million YouTube views on its most recent trailer, the latest instalment of the Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto Series, GTA VI, is quickly becoming the most anticipated title of 2026. The franchise has thrived because it provides a rare opportunity to explore social behaviours without real-world consequences. The appeal of digital rebellion is undeniable. Due to its immersive and open-ended design, the virtual experience carries significant ethical concerns. As with previous instalments, the game’s sandbox environment has, at times, been used as a platform for enacting violent scenarios targeting marginalized communities, raising questions about the implications of digital spaces for social behaviour. With the game’s setting – Vice City – loosely based on Miami, there has been a lot of speculation about the potential inclusion of various immigrant and minority groups, as well as gay clubs and venues. Some streamers and gamers have shared videos, memes, and content on how they plan on “dealing with” these issues.
Grand Theft Auto: A Franchise of Violence
With every technological advancement and new instalment, the line between what is real and what is virtual becomes more blurred. Along with these advancements, the franchise’s incorporation of violence has come a long way since the top-down car theft game released in 1997.
Sexual Violence
The portrayal of women in video games blurs the boundaries between in-game violence and real-world ethics. GTA V and similar games’ portrayal of sex work and violence against women, Vilaseca (2024) argues, contribute to the normalization of harmful gender stereotypes and violence.
Gabbiadini et al.’s (2016) study randomly assigned 154 male and female high school students to play one of three types of games: games with violence and sexism (two versions of GTA), games with violence but no sexism (Half Life 1 and 2), and finally games without either violence or sexism (Dream Pinball 3D or Q.U.B.E 2). Participants were then shown a photo of an adolescent girl who had been physically assaulted by a boy. One of their results found that boys who played games with violence and sexism identified with the character they were playing with and reported less empathy towards the images of female victims. GTA open-world games often have women in extremely sexualized roles, including as prostitutes and strippers. Doing harm to them is often rewarded with points, in-game cash, and upgrades for the player’s character. This exposure, argues Professor Bushman, a professor of communication and psychology at Ohio State University, leads gamers to become desensitized to the violence as they are taking an active role with low risks of enacting violent and sexist fantasies.
The GTA franchise has also been a victim of various hacks and mods that allow users to rape and sexually assault non-playable characters (NPCs) and other players in the online version of the game. Players have reported being victims of virtual rape, where the footage is recorded and uploaded to social media networks. In fact, players have used the mod to virtually rape others and post the footage online as an expression of their power and the powerlessness and humiliation of their victims.
Racial Violence
The GTA franchise is also at the intersection of racism and technology. The games and their developers have not shied away from attempting to tackle social problems affecting minority groups in society. The 2004 iteration of the game GTA: San Andreas, went beyond being a stereotypical game that glorified violence. Instead, it became a voice of resistance to police brutality against black communities.For instance, Franklin and Michael – two of the three playable protagonists – are supposed to represent a relationship that surpasses racist experience in society; however, the power dynamics and relationship itself are a representation of inequality. Franklin is a young black man tricked into a life of crime, and Michael is the white ex-con mentor teaching him how to rise to get a better lifestyle through his own criminal past and experiences.
The Franklin Conspiracy
Many players have reported experiencing police profiling when playing as Franklin, the black protagonist, even when exploring the open world; one player even reported that when cops could not find Franklin in a police chase, they ended up shooting another black man several times before his wanted stars were removed.
One of the most notable criticisms of the GTA franchise is its targeting and normalization of violence against racialized minority groups. GTA V’s ‘By The Book’ mission sees players use ‘Trevor’ (a white protagonist) to torture Kerimov, an Azerbaijani man who the ‘FIB’ (a mockery of the FBI) claims has ties with terrorism. Players can waterboard Kerimov, beat him with a wrench in the knees, arms, and genitals, shock him with a car battery, and extract teeth to get information. In her analysis of the mission, Ketterling (2022) argues that the narrative naturalizes American imperialism and “constructs Muslim bodies as sexually deviant and thus deserving torture”.
Grand Theft Auto: An Extremist World Like No Other?
In the age of Trumpism, with open racism and misogyny on social media, the perception of Arabs as terrorists, and immigrants eating pets, aggressive nationalism and anti-immigration sentiments have many wondering what more can be done as technology in the gaming world advances. The latest instalment GTA VI, has already spurred a lot of controversy online.
In various instances, social media responses to the GTA VI trailer showed the two main protagonists leaving a Pride Parade. In one trailer response, the post switched the scene to include the controversial “No Russian” mission from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, where the player participates in a mass shooting of civilians at Moscow airport. In another, the church massacre scene from Kingsman: The Secret Service is shown. The account boasts not only about violence in the parade, but also a moment of pride in streaming it for their users to see. Both responses represent a form of violence towards the civilians in an area. The former was more subtle, however, many gamers recognise that this mission is where the player takes part in a mass shooting at an airport targeting civilians. The latter – and more deliberate post – demonstrates the user’s eagerness to stream his violence towards NPCs at the parade.
A simple Instagram search for “GTA6” revealed the most popular videos on the platform with the game tagged. The most viewed video in the feed, gathering 8.6 million views, over 671,000 likes, and over 500,000 shares, was captioned “Rockstar has confirmed that you will be able to go into schools in gta 6”. The video then cuts to a scene from the movie American Psycho while the song Pumped Up Kicks plays in the background.
Reckoning With Hate in Digital Playgrounds
I would not expect players to use GTA VI any differently than its predecessors. The game’s large open world and technological capabilities will give players the freedom and opportunity to act in the same manner as in previous instalments of the company’s games. Whether the acts of violence are sexual or racist in nature, players have used the games to exert their power and dominance against targeted groups and have threatened to continue in this manner. And yet the questions remain: How can we stop these acts of violence in the upcoming version of the franchise? On whom is the onus to prevent and counter any spread of hate in GTA VI? And who is responsible for preventing and countering the use of these games to promote violent extremism?
In terms of the online experience, Rockstar Games faces a very difficult challenge – preventing the spread of hate in the game while balancing the freedom that they promise their players. At the end of the day, the developers will primarily care about sales rather than the morality of their gamers. However, I believe GTA VI could impose a content moderation system similar to the system in place in Roblox. The developers and moderators could also rely on their gamers. Consoles and computer systems all have a system to screen record and collect audio from the game and in-game chat for up to fifteen minutes. These accounts could be recorded and submitted to moderators or, if necessary, reported to authorities. Banning players, however, is not enough – re-creating accounts does not take much time or effort.
Mohamed Elgayar is a PhD candidate in the Political Science department at the University of Waterloo, Canada. He currently researches radicalization and extremism in gaming spaces.
This blog post is part of a series featuring contributions from presenters at the VOX-Pol Next Generation Network Conference 2025, held at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic.