Grand Theft Auto III

Grand Theft Auto III is an open-world action-adventure game developed by DMA Design in Edinburgh, now Rockstar North, and published by Rockstar Games. It launched on PlayStation 2 in North America in October 2001 (Metacritic and IGDB list 22 October; Rockstar's own 2001 news page said 23 October), followed by Windows in May 2002 and Xbox in November 2003. It was the first Grand Theft Auto game set in a fully 3D world.

Players follow Claude, a silent criminal betrayed during a bank robbery, through Liberty City, a city loosely modelled on New York. The structure it introduced — a free-roaming city, missions handed out by contacts in different districts, and in-car radio stations — became the template for Vice City, San Andreas, GTA IV and GTA V.

GTA III holds a 97 Metascore on PlayStation 2 and sold over 14.5 million copies by March 2008, its last public sales figure. Mobile versions arrived for its tenth anniversary in 2011, and a remaster was released in Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition in November 2021, which replaced the original PC version on Steam.

This hub collects AFK Journal coverage of GTA III, starting with its 25th anniversary: sales, review scores and Steam ratings for every 3D Grand Theft Auto game, with every number linked to its source. For the next entry, see our Grand Theft Auto VI hub.