There was a planned mass marketing campaign for GTA 6 that would take place in Miami-Dade County, the real life inspiration behind the fictional Vice City of the open world title and in was reported earlier that the mayor’s office was involved in talks with ‘executives from the company behind GTA’ regarding an upcoming massive campaign in the region. And according to the marketing proposal, billboards saying ‘Welcome to Vice City’ would be displayed at airports and Miami’s Metromover train wrapped in GTA 6 logo.
However, all of those were met with negative reactions and now, Miami-Dade County Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz himself has spoken to oppose the marketing proposal. In an official statement from the Miami Herald, Cordero-Stutz has said:
“Grand Theft Auto is a video game franchise built around criminal activity.
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.”
Also, the sentiment was echoed by Miami-Dade Commissioner Juan Carlos Bermudez, who’s currently a frontrunner for the next mayoral position:
“Miami-Dade County has spent decades building a reputation as a world-class destination for tourism, business, investment, and opportunityWe should be promoting the Miami-Dade we have worked so hard to build, not a fictional version of our community defined by crime and violence.”
Both the officials are spot-on in their principle, as even though GTA 6 is easily the most popular entertainment property on Earth, it also embodies all the activities that would land people in jail in real-life, basically the entire franchise is a open world crime simulator. So for a real world location to associate itself with the game in any way could indirectly imply that the criminal activities which are depicted in the game, also take place in that region which would obviously threaten it’s reputation in many ways.
GTA 6 is currently slated to launch for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S on November 19, 2026.
