Rockstar Games is one of the most well-respected video game studios in the industry, but they didn’t get here without a fair bit of controversy. In case you’re too young or simply don’t remember, Rockstar Games would frequently catch a lot of mainstream flak around the release of its new games. This was mainly a problem for the Grand Theft Auto series, but it extended to other games like Bully and Manhunt 2 as well. News outlets would talk about how outrageous their games were with the extreme violence, hypersexual content, and the fact that you could commit all kinds of crimes.
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There was a lot of hysteria about Rockstar Games back in the day, and there was pressure from public officials and politicians to go as far as banning some of their titles. It seems like that intensity has died down in recent years, but Rockstar has also only released two brand new games in the last 12 years. However, almost a full decade ago, an unauthorized movie was made about Rockstar Games that depicted the company’s public battles while also creating one of the biggest entertainment franchises on the planet.
In 2015, just two years after the release of Grand Theft Auto V, the BBC released a docudrama called The Gamechangers. The film starred Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe as Rockstar Games co-founder Sam Houser and Twister star Bill Paxton as lawyer and noted Rockstar Games hater Jack Thompson. The film was not authorized by Rockstar Games and explicitly opens with a line of text that notes this, which probably won’t surprise you given that Rockstar won’t even make movies on its own games. All of the events of the film are constructed based on interviews with ex-developers or court documents.
This movie is virtually impossible to find, and you probably will never get to see it unless you scrub the depths of the internet. It’s not streaming anywhere, there is no physical release, and I was lucky enough to recently discover a link for it on the Internet Archives, but it has since been taken down. I have spent years looking for it because I am a huge Rockstar Games fan, and it’s one of the only pieces of Rockstar-adjacent media I’ve never experienced. I was fortunate enough to watch it before it was taken down and it’s a very interesting movie, albeit one that’s a bit absurd.
The Gamechangers is like Rockstar’s equivalent of The Social Network, except it lacks the finesse of a control freak director like David Fincher and the sharp writing of someone like Aaron Sorkin. We get to go inside Rockstar Games following the release of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and see how the team builds Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which Sam Houser hopes will be an innovative magnum opus that reframes the way people look at video games. Houser is heavily influenced by Top Gun producer Don Simpson, even going as far as uttering the cringe-inducing phrase: “What would Don Simpson do?”
There are even some glimpses at the notorious frat boy culture that Rockstar was once accustomed to. However, this isn’t really the focus of the movie. It’s a big piece of it, but a lot of the making of San Andreas is hand-waved with boring tech jargon and vague statements about how great it will be, which feels redundant.
Instead, The Gamechangers hones in on the beef between Rockstar and Jack Thompson, a lawyer who was so gung-ho in trying to take down Rockstar that he ended up getting himself disbarred in the process. His main concern was that he feared the effect that Rockstar’s games could have on children and was known for making defamatory statements, professional misconduct, and more. At one point, he called Grand Theft Auto IV “the gravest assault upon children in this country since polio” in an effort to highlight how dangerous he believed the game was. Pretty extreme, yeah?
In the film, Thompson is put on to Grand Theft Auto when he learns of a real teen named Devin Moore who committed three murders after playing Vice City. Before committing any acts of actual violence, Moore is taken into custody on suspicion of stealing a vehicle. In jail, he steals an officer’s weapon and kills three cops before stealing a police car. All of this is shown through the classic GTA third-person camera perspective, all it’s missing is the HUD. It’s a clever piece of filmmaking, though it’s pretty bold given this really happened, and it was never proven that GTA was the cause of violence. The judge prevented the defense from showing the jury evidence that Grand Theft Auto caused him to kill three people.
Thompson obsessively pursues this case, believing Rockstar’s games cause violence, particularly in children, and even presents evidence that the military uses violent video games to train soldiers to become killers. Thompson’s actions make him a target of gamers, but he continues to pursue the case. Unfortunately for him, he is taken off the case due to his conduct, and the case is thrown out. Thompson’s grudge with Rockstar doesn’t end here, however, as Houser successfully sees GTA: San Andreas through to release.
The game’s a huge hit, but there’s a big problem: there’s sexual content on the disc that’s not supposed to be accessible to players. It’s not long before a modder discovers it and releases the infamous “Hot Coffee” mod, allowing players to participate and engage in interactive sexual intercourse, something that would give the game an AO rating. Very few games have an AO rating, as they’re virtually unmarketable and Xbox and PlayStation prohibit the release of AO games on their consoles. The content was intended to be edited to retain an M rating, but the files for it still existed on the disc. Thompson and Senator Hillary Clinton looked to hit Rockstar Games hard for failing to disclose this content, resulting in FTC hearings and fines.
Amidst the FTC happenings with Rockstar, Thompson is simultaneously undergoing a disciplinary hearing for his conduct earlier in the film, which ends with him being disbarred. Rockstar Games is ultimately able to keep operating as it does, and Sam Houser walks through the city while imagining it like it’s Grand Theft Auto.
The biggest problem with The Gamechangers is that it just tries to do too much in such a little time, making it mostly underwhelming. What’s really interesting about this movie, though, is that Rockstar Games was very vocally against it. Not only did Rockstar file a lawsuit against the BBC for trademark infringement, but the incredibly secretive developer broke character on Twitter when it aired and called the film “random, made up bollocks.” The Rockstar Twitter is otherwise very formal and doesn’t post anything besides updates and news for its games, so this really struck fans at the time. Some have even speculated that Sam Houser was the one posting from the account during this time. Ex-Rockstar employees also spoke out against the film, making fun of its inaccuracies.
I’m not quite sure what came of the lawsuit between Rockstar and the BBC, but it may explain why the film has been scrubbed from the internet. It’s possible Rockstar won the suit, or there was at least a settlement where the BBC agreed to never show the movie again, but there’s nothing out there that tells us what really happened. According to the BBC’s own website, the movie aired literally once in September 2015. It was never shown again after its initial premiere. Either way, it’s a fascinating piece of Rockstar Games history!
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