Why Elon Musk Says He Won't Be Playing Grand Theft Auto VI

The Grand Theft Auto series of video games has long been controversial for its depictions of, depending on the player, sex and/or violence. That perception has lessened somewhat over the years, perhaps in part because the last installment in the franchise, 2013's "Grand Theft Auto V," satirized the series and the open-world crime simulator genre that it inspired a lot more openly than the games had up to that point.

"I think each of the three characters can be described as being masters at greed, ambition, and insanity respectively," explained "Grand Theft Auto V" writer Dan Houser in a November 2012 interview with Famitsu that was translated by Polygon. "When a GTA hero becomes a criminal, he starts to get deeply moved by these three emotions."

Still, despite Grand Theft Auto's increasingly highbrow aims, it's still an open-world game that allows you to do some terrible things. Complicating matters further is that some of those terrible things are required or at least seemingly required to advance in the game. Earlier this week, in the aftermath of the official announcement of "Grand Theft Auto VI" via a trailer release, Tesla, X, and SpaceX magnate Elon Musk posted on X, the social media platform formally known as Twitter, that this turned him off to the series as a whole.

"Tried, but didn't like doing crime," Musk wrote in a reply to an X employee who tweeted that he'd never played any game in the "Grand Theft Auto" series. "GTA5 required shooting police officers in the opening scene. Just couldn't do it."

Tried, but didn’t like doing crime. GTA5 required shooting police officers in the opening scene. Just couldn’t do it.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 5, 2023

Musk is referring to the game's prologue, where there's a mandatory shootout with the local police after a heist gone wrong. However, though the game certainly gives the player the impression that they must shoot the police to advance, that's not entirely true. In 2019, as part of the first leg of his "pacifist challenge" — advancing through the game while attempting to only use lethal force in cases where the game won't progress unless you do so — YouTuber DarkViperAU showed that, though it can be a bit of a slog, you can advance through the police shootout by allowing your CPU-controlled teammates to take out the cops themselves.

Well, mostly. There's one officer that the game won't let the non-player characters kill, but the player can advance the story by knocking out that cop with a non-lethal melee attack. 

It's unclear whether or not Musk was entirely serious in his comment about his distaste for the "Grand Theft Auto V" prologue. Regardless, his assessment of what the game "makes" the player do was not entirely correct.