Following the release of the first GTA IV trailer, New York politicians have expressed a number of complaints about the game.
Just days after Take-Two replaced their current CEO with Strauss Zelnick as the new chairman; the company has found themselves subject to yet another PR calamity. The issue arose after the release of the first teaser trailer for GTA IV which showed a distinct likeness to New York, right down to some key monuments and buildings such as the Statue of Liberty.
"Setting Grand Theft Auto in the safest big city in America would be like setting Halo in Disneyland," suggested City Councilman Peter Vallone, chairman of the Council's Public Safety Committee.
Jason Post, a spokesman for Mayor Bloomberg commented that "The mayor does not support any video game where you earn points for injuring or killing police officers."
But as GameSpot editor Jeff Gerstmann notes, GTA IV is not labeled as being set in New York City bit rather in LibertyCity. "We've seen games that have been set in real cities, and that has been a weird route to take. By setting it in LibertyCity they can get away with that satire."
Of course what the article at NY Daily News decides against mentioning are the countless other films and media products that are based in New York (often filmed on location) that portray the city in a far more negative light than GTA’s Liberty City never could.
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