Open-world crime sandbox shipped nearly 470 million copies
Grand Theft Auto began with David Jones and Mike Dailly; later entries leaned on Dan and Sam Houser, Leslie Benzies, and Aaron Garbut. DMA Design’s 1997 debut grew into seven main games and four expansions by 2020, shipping almost 470 million units.
The series takes its name from the American legal term for car theft. Missions drive a story through an open world built around driving and shooting, with occasional stealth and role-playing, and each game follows protagonists climbing through the criminal underworld, often amid betrayal. Settings are fictional versions of real cities between the early 1960s and the 2010s: Liberty City echoes New York, Vice City mirrors Miami, and San Andreas began as a stand-in for San Francisco.
The first game came out for MS-DOS and Windows in November 1997, and London expansions set in 1969 and 1961 followed in 1999. Grand Theft Auto III moved the series into 3D in 2001, becoming a landmark that spawned the label GTA clone. Vice City in 2002 gave the series its first speaking lead, voiced by Ray Liotta, and San Andreas in 2004 added character customisation and a map of three cities with countryside. Rockstar North, formerly DMA Design, develops the games for its American parent, Rockstar Games.
Grand Theft Auto IV in 2008 stressed realism and added online multiplayer, and Grand Theft Auto V in 2013, with three playable protagonists, broke multiple sales records and was re-released across three console generations. San Andreas was pulled from shelves over the Hot Coffee mod. Grand Theft Auto VI, announced in December 2023 after footage leaked in September 2022, was later delayed to 19 November 2026.
Beyond games, David Kushner’s 2012 book Jacked chronicled the series, and the 2015 BBC docudrama The Gamechangers cast Daniel Radcliffe as Sam Houser, prompting a Rockstar trademark lawsuit. The BBC and the Design Museum listed the series among British design icons in 2006, and Roger Corman, producer of an unrelated 1977 film of the same name, claimed he had won a settlement over the title.
Source: Grand Theft Auto
