{"id":116084,"date":"2025-05-21T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-21T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/?post_type=ftm_article&#038;p=116084"},"modified":"2025-05-21T09:11:05","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T13:11:05","slug":"gta-6-delay-violence","status":"publish","type":"ftm_article","link":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/consumer-tech\/gta-6-delay-violence","title":{"rendered":"Grand Theft Auto 6\u2019s delay could lead to a spike in real-life crime"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The long-awaited <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rockstargames.com\/VI\">Grand Theft Auto 6<\/a> has a new release date: May 2026. The trailer looks beautiful, with modern photo-realistic graphics and a return to the Miami-like Vice City setting. Players will be able to play as Jason Duval and Lucia Caminos, a Bonnie-and-Clyde couple on an adventure of criminal mayhem.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For those unfamiliar with the GTA franchise, it has an open-world setting that allows you to run over pedestrians, get in shootouts with cops, or visit a grimy strip club. To be fair, the cops are corrupt, the strip clubs unappealing, and the pedestrians\u2026well, they should be quicker if they\u2019re living in a GTA city.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>GTA 5 was released in 2013, and like each GTA before it, the game\u2019s provocative content set off a flurry of pearl-clutching among the elite \u201csave the children\u201d set.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But this time\u2026nothing.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The major controversy surrounding GTA 6 seems to be its delayed release (it was supposed to come out in 2025) and what, if anything, it signals for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/consumer-tech\/indie-game-development\">video game industry<\/a> as a whole (games journalists <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/gta-6s-delay-doesnt-mean-the-games-industrys-in-trouble-its-already-dead\">complaining<\/a> about the addictiveness of social media are pretty cheeky given that people were making similar nonsense claims about video games not 10 years ago).&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><iframe title=\"Grand Theft Auto VI Trailer 2\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/VQRLujxTm3c?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Of course, the muted response may change once the game is actually out and little Jimmy is asking Grandma for a copy for Christmas (assuming little Jimmy still uses a machine that can even take a physical copy).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If GTA 6\u2019s 2026 release <em>is<\/em> greeted with yawns, it will be the surest sign yet that the video game moral panic is officially over, which would probably be bad news for GTA 6 itself, as the franchise always thrived on the kind of attention controversy generated.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One interesting question I\u2019ve seen raised, though: Could the delay in GTA 6\u2019s release actually be associated with <em>higher<\/em> crime rates? Yes, you heard that right. Could access to GTA 6 reduce crime \u2014 an impact that will now be delayed until May 2026?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-correlation-causation\">Correlation \u2260 causation<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>While we now can be pretty sure that the belief that playing violent video games increases <a href=\"https:\/\/www.christopherjferguson.com\/APA%20Reanalysis.pdf\">aggression<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/2023\/05\/02\/stanford-researchers-scoured-every-reputable-study-link-between-video-games-gun-violence-politics-mental-health-dupee-thvar-vasan\/\">is<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/royalsocietypublishing.org\/doi\/10.1098\/rsos.200373\">wrong<\/a> \u2014 in much the same sense that prior moral panics on everything from rock music to the radio proved to be wrong \u2014 thinking that the release of a particular video game could <em>reduce <\/em>societal violence is another hypothesis altogether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s also one most scholars weren\u2019t interested in exploring during the height of the video game moral panic. Fortunately, though, a few were, and they discovered an inverse correlation between America\u2019s consumption of violent video games and the per-capita youth violence victimization rate, as reported in National Crime Victimization Survey data.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Put bluntly, as society purchased more violent video games, youth violence declined precipitously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Modeling this relationship into the future is going to be tricky as more gaming switches to smartphones and non-physical copies of games become harder to track, but there\u2019s little reason to believe that this strong inverse correlation has changed much in recent years.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"1485\" height=\"851\" src=\"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/image.png?quality=75\" alt=\"Line graph showing youth violence (red line, left axis) decreasing and violent game consumption (blue line, right axis) increasing from 1996 to 2019.\" class=\"wp-image-116086\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/image.png 1485w, https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/image.png?resize=768,440 768w, https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/image.png?resize=320,183 320w, https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/image.png?resize=600,344 600w, https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/image.png?resize=1000,573 1000w, https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/image.png?resize=1400,802 1400w, https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/image.png?resize=330,189 330w, https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/image.png?resize=540,309 540w, https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/image.png?resize=850,487 850w, https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/image.png?resize=175,100 175w, https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/image.png?resize=275,158 275w, https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/image.png?resize=400,229 400w, https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/image.png?resize=360,206 360w, https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/image.png?resize=500,287 500w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1485px) 100vw, 1485px\" \/><div class=\"img-caption\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Data sources: Bureau of Justice Statistics \/ Entertainment Software Rating Board. Chart by: Christopher Ferguson.<\/figcaption><\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Of course, this is just correlational data and subject to what are called \u201cecological fallacies.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The most famous of these is the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalgeographic.com\/science\/article\/nick-cage-movies-vs-drownings-and-more-strange-but-spurious-correlations\">Nicholas Cage movies\/swimming pool deaths<\/a> correlation: The more Nicholas Cage movies that are released in a year, the more people drown in US swimming pools.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is absolutely true, with a very strong correlation, but there\u2019s obviously little reason to think that Nicholas Cage movies <em>cause<\/em> people to drown in swimming pools. Sure, maybe I\u2019d prefer to drown than see yet another of the prolific actor\u2019s movies, but we don\u2019t seriously think there\u2019s a causal link between them and pool fatalities. (Credit where credit is due: \u201cLonglegs\u201d was a sublime performance that well matched Cage\u2019s inherent creepiness.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019d bet, too, that there\u2019s a correlation between Beyonce\u2019s increasing salary and the temperature of the planet, but we wouldn\u2019t say Beyonce is literally making the world hotter (maybe figuratively, sure).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These kinds of ecological fallacies result in a lot of bad conclusions.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We\u2019re likely seeing one now as people kind of loosey-goosey look toward teenage girl suicide rates (ignoring the much higher suicide rates among middle-aged adults) and try to attribute them to social media and smartphones, despite <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cell.com\/heliyon\/fulltext\/S2405-8440(24)08494-9?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS2405844024084949%3Fshowall%3Dtrue\">little evidence<\/a> there\u2019s even a correlation, let alone causation. That youth suicides have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.edweek.org\/leadership\/cdc-child-teen-suicide-rates-fell-in-2022\/2023\/11\">started going down<\/a> in the US, despite little evidence that youth social media use has changed, is an inconvenient detail to be ignored.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, there\u2019s an extra wrinkle to the gaming data.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Building upon the basic inverse correlation between society\u2019s violent video game consumption and actual youth violence rates, some scholars have asked an interesting question: What happens when <em>specific<\/em> highly popular violent video games, such as Grand Theft Auto or Call of Duty, are released?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-virtual-violence-real-peace\">Virtual violence, real peace?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2015, Patrick Markey, a psychologist at Villanova University, <a href=\"https:\/\/psycnet.apa.org\/record\/2014-33466-001\">looked into the relationship between real-life violence and video games<\/a> with time-series analyses, which look for correlations between two variables, but in a more sophisticated way that can help rule out ecological fallacies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If violent video games caused youth violence, he should have seen peaks in youth violence after the release of highly popular violent video games, maybe a few days to weeks later. This should be a consistent pattern: Release a Call of Duty game, violence goes up. Have a lull in the release of highly popular violent games, youth violence should go down. Rinse and repeat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What Markey actually<em> <\/em>found when he dug into the data was unexpected.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The release of highly popular violent video games did<em> <\/em>affect violent crime, but in the opposite direction most people might have expected. In the days right after the release of games like Grand Theft Auto or Call of Duty, violent crime went down. This pattern was consistent each time such a game was released.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is kind of a rough ABAB design, by which I mean we introduce a variable and remove it, over and over, and keep seeing the same behavioral changes. To be sure, this isn\u2019t a controlled experimental design and is still correlational, but it gets us past the ecological fallacy concern to argue that maybe there\u2019s something more substantive here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Furthermore, Markey\u2019s results have been replicated.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Criminologist Scott Cunningham and colleagues <a href=\"https:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/abs\/10.1002\/soej.12139\">found similar results<\/a> when they looked at Index Crimes (murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, and arson) in the US. Researcher <a href=\"https:\/\/journals.sagepub.com\/doi\/10.1177\/1477370817717070\">Marinus Beerthuizen<\/a> found comparable results for violent game releases reducing violent juvenile crime in the Netherlands. Sociologist <a href=\"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/article\/10.1007\/s12115-017-0211-0\">Kevin McCaffrey<\/a> also found parallel results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-idle-hands\">Idle hands\u2026<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Why would this happen? The leading explanation appears to be something known as \u201croutine activities theory.\u201d Basically, the idea is that we take a group of individuals at high risk for a particular behavior, in this case teen boys and young men, who are vastly overrepresented among perpetrators of violent crime. Then we give them something to do that absorbs their time. In this case, that \u201csomething\u201d is spending hours and hours playing GTA.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because of this, they are, in essence, too busy to commit crimes. This causes violent crime to immediately drop. It\u2019s not really any more theoretically complicated than that.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Does this mean that the delay of GTA 6 could cost some people\u2019s lives? Basically, yes \u2014 albeit with some significant nuances around that conclusion.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s important to note that GTA 6 is so dominant as a video game that its delay is likely to push back the release of <a href=\"https:\/\/gamerant.com\/gta-6-second-release-date-delay-possible\/\">other games as well<\/a>, as they seek to avoid being overshadowed. This could create something of a dry spell of high-profile releases, removing the \u201croutine activities\u201d that would otherwise have kept some young men busy and out of trouble.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A single game being pushed back could merely shift the number of violent crimes back to a different date, with an overall flat effect. But delaying a whole host of commercial games could have a more substantial impact, particularly if there\u2019s nothing to replace GTA 6 in the interim.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>Video game companies are engines of money generation, not social policy.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>To be clear, I don\u2019t want to claim that the numbers would be massive or that this is the main thing we should be worried about when it comes to crime. I don\u2019t think we\u2019ll see a 2020-like spike in violent crime \u2014 which was influenced by official policy and general social reactions to policing at that time \u2014 and I\u2019d expect the economy, mental health, criminal justice policy, and other factors to have far more impact on overall violent crime rates than game release dates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But even small wobbles will matter to those individuals affected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yet, there\u2019s not much to be done. We can\u2019t force video game companies to put out shooter games when they\u2019re not ready. Companies are engines of money generation, not social policy. And, if we\u2019re serious about criminal justice policy, we should avoid being distracted from issues around gun control, reducing fatherlessness and income inequality, and returning to an asylum-based system for the chronically mentally ill.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There\u2019s always been the risk that the video game debate would distract society from more pressing issues, and I don\u2019t want to contribute to that, even if it\u2019s in an opposing direction. But there will probably be some non-gamers who will wish that GTA 6 had come out in 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>We\u2019d love to hear from you! If you have a comment about this article or if you have a tip for a future Freethink story, please email us at&nbsp;<a href=\"mailto:tips@freethink.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">tips@freethink.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If violent video games caused real-world violence, we&#8217;d see spikes in crime right after their release. Instead, we see the opposite.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":116087,"template":"","ftm_taxonomy_fields":[131],"ftm_taxonomy_challenges":[],"ftm_taxonomy_statuses":[36],"ftm_taxonomy_hidden_tags":[],"class_list":["post-116084","ftm_article","type-ftm_article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","ftm_taxonomy_fields-video-games","ftm_taxonomy_statuses-featured"],"acf":[],"apple_news_notices":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.9 (Yoast SEO v26.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Grand Theft Auto 6\u2019s delay could lead to a spike in real-life crime<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"If violent video games caused real-world violence, we&#039;d see spikes in crime right after their release. 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