1. 10 Horrifically Illegal Things You
Can Do In Rockstar’s Games
http://www.gamebasin.com/news/10-horrifically-illegal-things-you-can-do-
in-rockstars-games
Like that kid in school who would always cause trouble yet never get caught, you have to admire
Rockstar and their incredibly apt choice of name. Easily the most rock ‘n’ roll games developer out
there right now, their games inspire controversy and mischief on a daily basis. Two of their most
well‐known series’ ‐ Grand Theft Auto and Manhunt ‐ are well known in the public for their crimes
against decency, but their penchant for causing trouble can be seen in their less notorious work
too. Bully, for example, caused a huge stir prior to its release simply due to the name of the game.
Even their entry in the Max Payne series or that of the Midnight Club titles (which have never really
caused huge bouts of controversy) feature or encourage highly illegal activities – it’s safe to say
that Rockstar aren’t afraid of continually rocking the boat. Some illegal activities are featured so
constantly in Rockstar’s games now that they’re not even shocking anymore. Killing a prostitute
might as well be a side‐mission in Grand Theft Auto and abusing your lasso to hogtie some innocent
people in the dusty towns of Red Dead became second nature to some. This article explores some
of the darker recesses of Rockstar’s games; moments where we as gamers can perform acts or
feats that would have us locked up faster than you can say “Trevor Philips”. This article also seeks
to highlight just a handful of the controversies caused by Rockstar’s games, as documenting every
single one would be a near impossible feat. So brace yourself; we’re about to take a walk on the
wild side.
10. Sell Your Organs On The Black Market
During the mission Have A Heart in Grand Theft Auto IV, paymaster Elizabeta Torres murders both

2. Manny and Jay out of drug‐fuelled anger, leaving Niko to dispose of the bodies. Not wanting to
miss a good opportunity to cash in though, he stuffs them into the boot of his car and drives to a
very shifty doctor who buys the two off of Niko to harvest for saleable organs – it’d definitely be
interesting to see how that business plan fares on the Apprentice. Obviously transporting dead
bodies around in your car is incredibly ill‐advised; telling the cops you’re taking them to a
backstreet doctor to sell probably won’t help your case either. To be fair, Niko does all of this with
a smile on his face; when Little Jacob rings up mid‐mission to see if Niko wants to go eat, Niko
replies that he’s already hanging out with two friends (apparently Niko is a master of comedic
timing). As annoying as Manny is during his missions, being harvested and sold on the black market
is a pretty grim fate for anybody. Niko stoops to some extraordinary depths in Grand Theft Auto IV;
this might be just about the lowest.
9. Visit A Paedophilic Website
The internet is a dark and scary place; we all know that. Grand Theft Auto IV’s in‐game internet is
no different, as evidenced by this easter egg. You will find the above screen at the in‐game website:
www.littlelacysurprisepageant.com – as you can see, the LCPD are monitoring traffic to the site
and as a result, your character is now under investigation. Oops. You’ll earn an instant 5‐Star
Wanted Level and the FIB and LCPD will be on your case immediately. It’s an entertaining easter
egg with a much darker undertone but it’s clearly all meant to be in jest; after all, there’s no actual
paedophilic content in the game at all. Rockstar have pushed the boundaries of what’s acceptable
in this manner before though; Little Lacy Surprise is actually a brand that’s regularly used within
the series. Radio ads for suggestive underwear for kids are played on GTA: Vice City Stories and
there are further references in Chinatown Wars and GTA V. It’s all tongue‐in‐cheek (intended as a
parody of beauty pageants in general) but it’s easy to see why people could be offended. If you’re
curious about whether the website has become a reality, don’t worry: it used to link back to
Rockstar’s own but now simply comes up with an error message. Phew!
8. Steal $200,000,000

3. Theft is an unsurprisingly common theme in Grand Theft Auto; well, it is in the name after all.
However, stealing cars and robbing tills is absolutely amateur when compared to Grand Theft Auto
V’s final heist though where our three anti‐heroes raid the Union Depository and make off with
just over 200 million dollars (if you don’t lose some along the way that is). The Big Score can be
completed one of two ways; Subtle or Obvious. Subtle sees the group enter the Depository in
Securicars before escaping in Gauntlet vehicles as a reference of sorts to The Italian Job. The
Obvious route tasks you with blowing a hole in the vault before flying it out with a helicopter; it’s
quite the spectacle and it’s still not even the game’s final mission. When all is said and done, the
gang splits a huge pot of money and goes on with their lives (presumably leading to more theft,
crime and killing). Stealing such a vast quantity of gold will definitely have put Trevor, Franklin and
Michael on the FIB’s radar but on top of that there’s plenty of counts of destruction, murder and
speeding tickets racked up in this mission; frankly, the most important thing this highlights is how
incompetent San Andreas’ law enforcement is.
7. Sleep With A Prostitute (Then Bludgeon Her
To Death)

4. The second mission in Grand Theft Auto III has you picking up a prostitute named Misty then taking
her back to a nightclub – Sex Club 7. It’s fair to say that from this point onwards, everything about
gaming’s perception changed. Prostitutes have since been featured in every single Grand Theft
Auto game; they’re as important to the series as cars or guns. Picking one up in a car and then
slinking off to somewhere dark and quiet will cause the car to rock while your character’s health
increases; there’s nothing graphic but to be fair, you don’t really need it. Of course prostitution is
illegal but you can continue your spree if you so wish. After the transaction has been made, the
prostitute will go on her merry way, but killing her will cause the money you’ve just spent to appear
– making her services free. Feel free to do so in broad daylight too as the police will very rarely care
unless it’s done right in front of them. Despite never being a requirement, killing prostitutes was
probably Grand Theft Auto’s first major controversy. It eventually led to the game’s ban in Australia
(Vice City was also censored in the country as a result) and the series will forever be defined in the
mass public’s eye as “That Game Where You Sleep With Prostitutes And Then Kill Them”. Rockstar
seem to have embraced this too; the mature content in their games has increased dramatically
(who can forget the Hot Coffee scandal?) as has their sales. Just don’t try this at home.
6. Become A Drug Dealer

5. Drugs are fairly common in the GTA universe but Chinatown Wars for the DS upped the ante
considerably by featuring drug‐dealing as a mini game. There’s six different drugs to peddle (heroin,
coke, ecstasy, acid, weed and downers/depressants) and it’s surprisingly in‐depth; certain groups
will pay a higher price for one drug while selling another at a lower price; buying from one gang
and selling to a different one just makes good business sense. Often your dealings will be
interrupted by the police, leading to a two‐star Wanted level. There’s actually a way to decrease
this chance though; destroying the many CCTV cameras throughout the game will help keep your
side‐business work on the sly. You can also add theft to your rapsheet by stealing drug vans and
plundering them for valuable loot – it turns out that drug dealers are a lot like pirates. Naturally,
this feature stoked controversy in the mass media; many anti‐drug charities spoke out about
Rockstar using narcotics as entertainment, thereby glorifying them. How did Rockstar respond to
this? They claimed that they actually wanted to introduce drug dealing into the series earlier as it
was “another layer or piece of the puzzle to keep you motivated”.
5. Drink And Drive

6. Like the rest of the world, your Grand Theft Auto protagonists like to go out to a nice bar and get
absolutely slaughtered. In San Andreas, drinking was strictly for dates alone and there were no side
effects. Grand Theft Auto IV was the first game where the player’s character could get drunk and it
resulted in some hilarious moments. The camera sways about as your character trips and stumbles
around; the effect worsens depending on who Niko has been drinking with. Naturally, being a GTA
game, controversy lies around every corner and it’s possible to get into a car and drive while drunk.
Niko, being the responsible guy that he is, will remark that it’s not a good idea… But will then go
ahead anyway. Driving while drunk is incredibly difficult; your vision is compromised and the game
will actually steer your car towards the nearest solid object to encourage you to crash. If the police
see you in this state, they’ll be after you, escalating the situation considerably. The drinking effect
is lessened with Grand Theft Auto V although Trevor can often be found intoxicated in various parts
of San Andreas when you switch to him. Another of Rockstar’s ‘heroes’ Max Payne is an alcoholic
too; I’m not certain that using bullet time while drunk is actually a crime though.
4. Torture An Innocent Man
As we’ve already seen, Rockstar isn’t afraid to overstep the mark by a mile. In Grand Theft Auto V,
Michael, Trevor and Franklin have to deal with a corrupt FIB agent named Steve Haines who seeks
to sabotage the International Affairs Agency (a parody of the CIA) to secure more funding for his
own department. He makes our trio break into the IAA building to kidnap a terrorist suspect named
Ferdinand Karimov before reappearing later to hand Trevor and Michael another mission – turning
into GTA V’s most controversial so far. It’s fair to say that torture is a much debated subject.
Rockstar evidently feel strongly about the subject too, which is why GTA V features an un‐skippable
segment where Trevor tortures Karimov (now referred to as Mr.K) to gather information about
another terrorist suspect. There’s four different torture methods available, and they’re all pretty
brutal. You can waterboard Mr. K (this method, more than any other, is probably intended as a dig
at the U.S Government), you can take a wrench to his knee, arm or genitals, you can shock him
with a car battery or you can extract a tooth from him using pliers. Up to four rounds of torture can
be undertaken in this mission (you can simply kill Mr. K to end the mission quicker) but you’re

7. forced to at least go through two rounds. Perhaps worst of all, it turns out that Mr. K is actually an
innocent man who simply did some home theater work for the terrorist suspect that Haines is
searching for. Trevor opts not to kill him at the conclusion of the mission (though this is only
because he doesn’t like doing what he’s told) and instead takes him to the airport and tells him to
leave the country. Bit late for the nice guy act though, Trevor. This mission has been widely panned
for glorifying torture and utilising it for entertainment purposes; with Rockstar’s satirical intentions
simply going too far for the majority of players.
3. Brutally Murder Someone With A Chainsaw
In all honesty, this entry could just be entitled ‘Anything In Manhunt’. Easily Rockstar’s most
controversial franchise (and really, as we’ve already established, that’s saying something),
Manhunt is a psychological horror game centred around executing enemies stealthily. To put it
bluntly, these executions are horrific. From simple stabbings to clubbing people around the head
with a hammer, every execution is bloody and violent. Gamers and gore‐fiends loved it. The media
didn’t. The game’s finale sees ‘protagonist’ James Earl Cash confronting antagonist Lionel
Starkweather with a chainsaw; naturally, it ends pretty gruesomely as Cash proceeds to
disembowel and behead Starkweather to close the game (if you’re not squeamish, check the
footage above). It’s incredibly brutal and even now (what with all the death and gore we see in
games, films and television shows), it’s pretty shocking stuff. According to former Rockstar
employee Jeff Williams, even staff members felt like the game was way overboard. Various U.S
politicians condemned the game for teaching kids how to kill while others highlighted the hypocrisy
in criticising Manhunt but not other forms of entertainment. In the UK, a copy of the game was
seized as evidence in the murder trial of 14 year old Stefan Pakeerah (although it was later
exonerated of any responsibility for the tragic death) and follow‐up Manhunt 2 was twice refused
a classification from the BBFC. For one moment in time, merely owning a copy of Manhunt 2 could
have been deemed illegal in itself.
2. Be A Terrorist

8. A free‐roam game with planes, bombs and weapons will always draw some comparisons to real‐life
terrorist events. Set that game in a city that resembles New York and you’re simply making it
easier for people. Rockstar has always been criticised for ‘encouraging’ terrorism in their games
(after all, you do play as some despicable humans who only seem to want to heap misery and death
upon others). However Grand Theft Auto IV was written off by some as a ‘terrorist simulator’,
simply because Liberty City is designed to resemble New York. Grand Theft Auto III also had content
cut following the 9/11 tragedy; an entire story arc featuring a boss named Darkel was cut because
of the terrorist nature of his missions (one involved driving an ice cream van around to attract
pedestrians and then blowing it up). Has age changed Rockstar? Nope. Grand Theft Auto V’s most
controversial moment comes from the aforementioned mandatory torture scene, though this was
more to highlight the U.S Government’s treatment of terrorist suspects, rather than as a way to
genuinely terrorise people. Of course, Rockstar’s content could be completely innocent; it’s the
players and the community that will find ways to ruin it. A quick search through Google or YouTube
will show you re‐enactments of various events or people simply going on murder sprees for the
sake of it. Again though, you could apply that to nearly every free‐roam game these days; Rockstar
pride themselves on offering up a black mirror that reflects peoples’ darkest desires – but it’s the
gamer who has to take a look.
1. Tie Innocent People To Rail Tracks
Grand Theft Auto in the Wild West might not have sounded like a great idea for a game but Rockstar
absolutely nailed it with Red Dead Redemption. It looked beautiful, it played great and the story (a
tale of redemption, surprisingly) was suitably epic. One of the key features of the game involved
John Marston’s lasso which he can use to capture and hogtie villains for ransom. Of course, this
being a Rockstar game, you can also hogtie innocents… and that’s where it all gets a bit murky.
With cars and planes being a rarity back in 1911, horses and trains provide the game’s main
transportation. Of course, where there are trains, there are train tracks, and in RDR you can go full
stereotypical mua‐ha‐ha’ing villain and tie someone to them, before sitting back and watching
the train decimate everything. If you want to feel extra villainous, try growing a handlebar

9. moustache and twirl it while laughing manically. We’ve already established that Rockstar are an
incredibly well thought‐out development team though; surely they wouldn’t encourage this sort
of train‐related havoc? On the contrary, Red Dead Redemption has an Achievement/Trophy for
hogtying a woman (yes, it even specifies that it’s a woman for extra villain points) to the tracks and
watching her explode into nothing. It’s aptly named Dastardly, by the way. Ah, the good old days
of the Wild West – sun, sand and horrific crimes against humanity everywhere you looked.
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