For the renegades behind Grand Theft Auto, controversy is all part of the game

This article is from the May/June issue of Radar Magazine. For a risk-free issue, click here.

If you think the hooker-stabbing, car-jacking gameplay of the Grand Theft Auto series is intense, consider the real-world plight of its creator, Rockstar Games. In recent years, the boutique video game designer has faced a parade of politicians scapegoating its wares, an expensive recall due to sex simulations accessible to hackers in the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas game code, rumors of workplace harassment, SEC and FTC investigations, a hostile takeover bid from Electronic Arts, and a bevy of critics who decry the flagship franchise as racist and misogynistic. As if that weren't enough, GTA vice president and company cofounder Dan Houser discovered a rodent infestation in the office. "We had to get cats," he says wryly, sitting in the company's massive loft. "They hunted those fuckers dead."

Spitzer used the game for more inspiration than he's willing to let on. That kind of hypocrisy is beyond satireOne problem solved. But how does Houser plan to deal with the others? Rockstar Games—whose motto, "Hostes ad Pulverem Ferire," means "Pound the Enemy to Dust"—has devoted three years, 150 employees, and countless man-hours to creating a game that will silence critics, goad the haters, and guarantee the company's financial security. Grand Theft Auto IV (out April 29) presents a mind-bendingly complex, obsessively detailed world called Liberty City—a fully explorable alternate version of New York City (plus a bit of New Jersey). Inside this massive virtual landscape, gamers can apply for jobs, go on dates, get drunk, and shoot at cops. "We want to make a game that gives players the feeling that they are starring in their own movie," Houser explains. It's a comparison likely to make Hollywood execs sweat. An analyst from investment firm Janco Partners predicts the game's release will dampen ticket sales for Paramount's big-budget release Iron Man, set to debut just three days later.

If Grand Theft Auto IV is a movie, however, it is almost certainly a satire. Mock ads dot the landscape, promoting things like the faux reality show America's Next Top Hooker. A certain recently disgraced New York governor may feel the sting of Rockstar's skewering most painfully. Players will notice that GTA IV character Bryce Dawkins, a political candidate running on the slogan "Choose your future—choose abstinence," bears a more than passing resemblance to Eliot Spitzer, who loudly condemned Rockstar's whore-happy adult content during his '06 campaign, only to be caught misusing his own joystick two years later.

"Spitzer used the game for more inspiration than he's willing to let on," explains Houser, smiling. "That kind of hypocrisy is beyond satire; I couldn't even write it."