Jacked: The unauthorized behind-the-scenes story of Grand Theft Auto. David Kushner

a fortune on stickers that they slapped over the Steal This Game ads with the word Censored. When Baglow questioned the plan, he was told it was guerrilla marketing in action. “It’s not guerrilla marketing,” he replied. “It’s a fuck-up.”

      The problems didn’t end there. As Baglow later recalled, word spread around Rockstar that a website called “Fuckstar” had been set up online by a disgruntled former employee. When the team booted up the page, they found a vandalized version of the Rockstar logo—along with the sound of a toilet flushing. Sam and Dan hit the roof.

      After hiring an investigator to look into the matter, they realized they were the ones being had. Unbeknownst to them, a GTA2 marketing exec had planted the fake site as part of an elaborate ruse intended to build buzz for the game. The plan was to leak word that a Rockstar employee had nearly been killed by real gangs while doing research for GTA2—but that Rockstar covered up the mess. In retaliation, the scorned Rockstar had supposedly set up this vengeful site, Fuckstar. The elaborate hoax had been kept from the Housers to try to give it legs, but it proved to be yet another mis-conceived disaster.

      For Baglow, the marketing mishaps demonstrated how easily Rock-star could go off the rails. “During GTA2, we engaged PR and tried to court controversy, but it was not the slick PR machine that everyone imagined,” he later said. “It wasn’t the shadowy masters behind the scenes engineering controversy. It was more like things came out, and then we were, like, ‘Oh, shit.’”

      DAVE JONES had been called a lot of names since he started making games. Genius. Boy wonder. Spielberg. Yet while Rockstar was busy courting trouble with GTA2 in the United States, he earned a new moniker: sheep abuser. It had happened on the release of a quirky new DMA game called Tanktics. The game challenged players to create tanks from bizarre found parts—including sheep, for power.

      When word of Tanktics got out, animal rights groups protested. “I am sure they could have thought of something else to make the game exciting,” said a spokeswoman for one. “It has yet to be shown that a serial killer started by abusing animals in a computer game,” a DMA producer responded.

      Had it really come to this? Yes, Jones was rich. He had a Ferrari with a vanity plate in front. He saw GTA ruling the charts, and geeks were wearing their Rockstar tracksuits around Dundee (one guy gave one to his mother, who was seen sporting a velvety blue get-up while walking her dog). Yet Jones didn’t want to be a rock star. He hated the press, the attention, and just wanted to make the next innovative game.

      One day, he called in a reporter to show him his dream project: a virtual city. It was something he had wanted initially with GTA before the game had gone deep into its criminal direction. Now he was bringing it back. Unlike GTA, this world would let players be anyone they choose, from a cop to a businessman. He compared it to “a computerized version of the film The Truman Show.”

      This as yet untitled game represented the underlying tension between Jones and Sam. Privately, Jones felt that despite their Rockstar posturing, they were increasingly demanding corporate executives at heart. If Rockstar was supposedly the rebel child of Take-Two, the guys seemed more like their parents instead. “There was definitely tension there,” he later said. “Should we be making a game to a deadline, or should we be making it to a quality bar?” GTA2 was proof: a lackluster sequel, in his opinion, that had been rushed out to cash in on the first.