From WIRED · Miles Klee · · 2m
The right can't cancel Grand Theft Auto VI
Anti-woke gamers spent years building a boycott for GTA VI, and Rockstar has already banked half a billion dollars.
In brief
Anti-woke gamers spent years building a boycott for GTA VI, and Rockstar has already banked half a billion dollars. Manufactured outrage cycles have no grip on a game this big, so the crusade quietly moves on to the next target. Originally reported by WIRED.
A franchise never called sensitive
From the late 1990s through the early 2010s, Grand Theft Auto was attacked for sex, violence, crude humor and crime, not for politics. Elon Musk said he couldn't stomach shooting cops in GTA V.
The panic switched targets
Thirteen years after GTA V, the grievance machine no longer worries kids will turn to crime. It worries they will turn woke.
Outrage built on almost nothing
GTA VI lands November 19 and critics know very little about it. They have already decided it is a stealth campaign pushing gender equality, LGBTQ acceptance and racial diversity.
Gamergate never ended
Since 2014, a subset of male gamers has kept watch for women and LGBTQ developers in games. Years of GTA VI delays gave them time to stage a backlash before release.
An outfit scene as proof
A clip where Lucia Caminos asks Jason Duval to pick her outfit became evidence of a feminist agenda. She is the series' first mandatory female protagonist.
“GTA 6 is a humiliation ritual for all male gamers”
Sequins and cocktails
One poster decided Jason reads gay because no straight man knows the word sequins. A YouTuber took a shirtless scene as courting women and gay men.
“The script is definitely written by a woman who has no clue what a man thinks or how he talks”
Reaching for reasons
One YouTuber claims the game will brainwash players with bisexual lighting. Others complain Lucia's breasts are too small, or ran the cover art through an image generator to swap her for a white blonde in a bikini.
Years of groundwork
In 2022 Rockstar cut gags critics called transphobic from the GTA V remaster. In 2023 trolls floated a baseless theory that Lucia was transgender.
Aimed at the developers
The Rockstar team gets blasted for identity politics and for letting women near the franchise. A 2019 International Women's Day photo of staff in Scotland still circulates with sneers about who ruined the game.
The numbers already won
Preorder estimates put GTA VI at 5.28 million copies and over $500 million before launch, enough to cover its billion-dollar budget almost immediately. Even Nick Fuentes told a complaining viewer to go touch grass.
“Just go outside, touch grass”
What matters most
Manufactured outrage cycles have no grip on a game this big, so the crusade quietly moves on to the next target.
