Short answers, pulled from the story.
The first Grand Theft Auto game was released in November 1997. It was created by David Jones and Mike Dailly at the British studio DMA Design. The original title was available for MS-DOS and Windows before being ported to the PlayStation and Game Boy Color.
David Jones and Mike Dailly developed the original Grand Theft Auto game. They worked together at a British studio known as DMA Design. Their creation established the top-down, two-dimensional gameplay that defined the series early on.
Grand Theft Auto III was released in October 2001. This title transformed the franchise from a niche cult classic into a global blockbuster by shifting gameplay from a top-down perspective to a fully realized 3D world. It allowed players to explore Liberty City, a fictional version of New York City, with unprecedented freedom.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is set in a fictional version of California and Nevada featuring three major cities. These cities are Los Santos, San Fierro, and Las Venturas. The game expanded the series scope beyond a single city to an entire state with vast rural areas and deserts.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas became the center of a major controversy when a hidden sex minigame known as Hot Coffee was discovered in the game's code. Modders found the unused code and released unofficial patches that enabled players to engage in these sexual mini-games. This led to an Adults Only rating from the ESRB and forced Take-Two Interactive to re-release the game to restore its Mature rating.
Over 4,000 articles have been published about the Grand Theft Auto series. The series has been the most controversial video game series in history and has been the subject of numerous lawsuits. These legal cases involved families of murder victims who claimed that the games caused their loved ones to commit crimes.