Civil servants have been playing GTA Online to better understand the lives of the public, although some find the whole scheme a waste of taxpayers’ money.
Given the enormous popularity of GTA Online (which makes £1 million every day for developer Rockstar Games), its audience must be made up of people from all walks of life, beyond just the stereotypical gamer crowd.
That naturally would include members of the government, at least in terms of civil servants, but apparently they’re actually being paid to play the game, rather than just enjoying it in their spare time.
This is apparently a part of a scheme to interact with the general public and understand ‘people’s lived experience.’
This comes from a report published by The Telegraph, which states that this experiment is being conducted by Policy Lab, a small team of 30 civil servants within the Department for Education (DfE).
While Policy Lab was founded by the previous Conservative government, this GTA Online project began in December 2024, five months after the current Labour government came into power.
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Members of Policy Lab have since been playing GTA Online, observing the actions of regular players and even speaking with them so they could ‘reveal impactful insights about people’s lived experience.’
Which apart from anything else makes it sound like the civil servants themselves aren’t people.
Some highlighted examples include ordinary players saying they enjoy the experience of running a successful business or spending time on a personal yacht, as well as simply hanging out with others remotely.
As amusing as the thought of civil servants robbing banks and gunning down police is, we’re not sure you’d need to play GTA Online to understand that people like the idea of living out power fantasies.
One anonymous Whitehall source certainly doesn’t, calling the whole scheme ‘nonsense’ and ‘exactly the kind of Tory hangover this Government wants to root out.’
‘Ministers did not sign off these projects and don’t want to see taxpayers’ money wasted on video games when there are bigger problems the public care about.’
Shadow cabinet office minister Mike Wood agrees, telling The Telegraph, ‘It’s important that civil servants have the right skills – but playing Grand Theft Auto isn’t among them.’
‘The government must halt this absurd waste of resources immediately. Taxpayers rightly expect value for money, and Labour must ensure they get it.’
Playing GTA Online isn’t the only experiment Policy Lab has been running. It’s also held workshops for clay modelling and knot tying to ‘encourage participants to step outside standard responses and explore the emotional and contextual dimensions of learning.’
The DfE hasn’t issued a comment, but it wouldn’t be surprising if it kept up the GTA Online experiment, considering GTA 6 is right around the corner and will see a massive influx of players.
While Rockstar will soon be offering free current gen upgrades of GTA 5, it hasn’t explained whether GTA Online will continue alongside GTA 6 or be replaced with a GTA Online 2. The latter is rumoured to be a thing, even if it doesn’t launch with GTA 6 in November.
It’s also unclear if/how GTA Online and GTA 6 will be impacted by prime minister Keir Starmer’s proposed social media ban, which would make numerous social media websites inaccessible to anyone younger than 16.
The proposal doesn’t mention anything about video games, meaning they could be omitted, much like Australia’s social media ban, but the government also plans to ban children from using online chat functions in games like Fortnite to communicate with strangers.
GTA Online has chat functions so Rockstar will likely be forced to implement age verification, even though the GTA games have traditionally received 18+ age ratings and thus shouldn’t even be being played by children anyway.
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