GTA Online Shelved Cops N' Crooks Mode After George Floyd's Murder

screenrant.com:

Rockstar Games once planned to introduce a mode where players could chase each other as cops and criminals in Grand Theft Auto Online, but abandoned the idea in the wake of the George Floyd murder. The death of the unarmed Floyd at the hands of a group of Minneapolis police officers who knelt on top of his neck for over nine minutes sent shockwaves throughout America during the summer of 2020 and renewed discussions about excessive force and accountability in law enforcement, leading to massive protests across the country.

The ramifications of George Floyd’s murder and the resulting Black Lives Matter protests would impact the video game industry too, with publishers like The Pokémon Company donating large sums of money to the protest movement and major events like the unveiling of the PlayStation 5 being postponed to give activists a chance to spread their message. Games that were being developed at the time of the protests, such as Spider-Man: Miles Morales, would include tributes to the Black Lives Matter movement, and it seems that Rockstar Games was also impacted by the social climate following the death of George Floyd when developing features for its ongoing Grand Theft Auto Online MMO.

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Earlier today, Bloomberg posted an in-depth article on how Rockstar Games is changing its workplace culture and approach to content in the wake of a massive staff shakeup, and one of the topics discussed was how the mega-company behind the Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption franchises responded to the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. During this time, Rockstar was planning to bring Grand Theft Auto 4's “Cops ‘n’ Crooks” mode into GTA Online, which would