Despite calling Grand Theft Auto ‘a videogame franchise built around criminal activity,’ Miami-Dade sheriff isn’t mad about the NBA’s ‘Vice City’ transformation

THEN:

NOW:

WHAT?

Vice City and Leonida, the fictional city and state that serve as the setting for Grand Theft Auto 6, are largely based on Miami and the state of Florida, and Rockstar and publisher Take-Two Interactive are moving heavy and hard to leverage that real-life inspiration to promote GTA 6 as its console release gets closer.

The sheriff made no bones about her position on the matter when the proposed partnership came to light in September, however, characterizing the game as exactly the sort of thing Miami-Dade shouldn’t associate with.

“Grand Theft Auto is a videogame franchise built around criminal activity,” Cordero-Stutz said at the time. “Its fictional world includes murder, robbery, drug trafficking, carjacking, violence against law enforcement, and other conduct that the men and women of the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office work every single day to prevent.”

It was a hard line in the sand, but it didn’t add up to much. Despite some opposition from local positions, much of it predicated on similar law-and-order concerns, those PR campaigns have moved ahead. The City of Miami Beach voted in September to approve a ‘discreet’ campaign, for instance, while the Kaseya Center, a downtown arena in Miami that serves as home of the NBA’s Miami Heat, took a rather less subtle approach, erecting a massive “Welcome to Vice City” sign on its roof that can be seen by travellers flying into Miami International Airport.

The Kaseya Center campaign became even more prominent in October when the Heat, one of the NBA’s highest-profile teams, became directly involved via the Night in Vice City campaign, a one-night-only promotion that will see both the arena and the team rebranded in Vice City livery. It is, as former US President Joe Biden once said, “a big fuckin’ deal.”

(It also revealed that our UK team does not know ball, but that’s a whole different kind of problem.)

I thought the sheriff might take issue with such a high-profile embrace of a videogame she had so wholeheartedly decried just a month ago, Despite her previously-expressed opposition, though, she seemingly has no issue with the Heat hopping on board.

“Sheriff Cordero-Stutz’s comments focused on the proposed use of publicly owned facilities and infrastructure, including public transportation, transit stations, and Miami International Airport, to promote Grand Theft Auto 6,” a sheriff’s department representative told PC Gamer. “Her concerns addressed the message conveyed through the use of these public assets. Those comments were not directed at promotional decisions by private businesses or organizations.”

I’m not sure how much of a difference the public/private thing makes in a practical sense—public or private, ‘Miami is becoming Vice City’ is the very high-profile crux of the campaign—but in spite of the many years passed since the Hot Coffee scandal, it’s a needle that some are still trying to thread. The promo campaign approved by Miami Beach, for instance, will be managed by Boucher Brothers, a “hospitality management” company in Florida: Advertising materials will appear on things like Boucher Brothers chairs and umbrellas, rather than on city property.

Those chairs and umbrellas may appear on city property, which makes me think that trying to put some sort of minimum safe distance between them and the responsibilities of civic leadership might be largely moot.

On the other hand, the outright alarmism of days past has clearly receded. The glitzy rebranding of Miami and other parts of Florida speaks for itself, and Cordero-Stutz’s admonishment notwithstanding, police don’t seem too worried that pretending to be Vice City is going to turn Miami into actual Vice City: During the Miami Beach debates, for instance, one city commissioner said an officer he spoke to laughed off concerns about the impact of the game and promotional campaign on the city. Crass commercialism isn’t really my bag but as someone who was around for the entire Jack Thompson era, I have to admit that this is kind of nice to see.