Report: Chicago pulling GTA IV ads

New York City politicians were decidedly unhappy when they first found out Grand Theft Auto IV's Liberty City setting was a thinly veiled take on the Big Apple, but with a week to go before the game's release, the biggest gripe about the game is rising out of Chicago. The local Fox affiliate is reporting that the Chicago Transit Authority plans to pull an advertising campaign for the latest criminal action game from Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive.

The Fox report--available as a video clip on the station's Web site--begins by noting this past weekend was "an especially violent" one for Chicago, which left dozens of people shot and six dead.

"And what did we spot on CTA buses and platforms," anchor Andy Roesgen asked. "Advertisements for the unapologetically violent video game Grand Theft Auto."

Roesgen then recaps a 2004 stir over CTA ads for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on the PlayStation 2. In that incident, Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich (whose game restriction legislation was declared unconstitutional, much to the expense of the state's taxpayers) criticized the CTA for accepting the $90,000 ad campaign, but the ads were set to come down anyway by the time the issue drew attention.

The Fox report cited a CTA representative as saying that transit authority president Ron Huberman had decided to pull the advertising campaign. Neither Take-Two Interactive nor the CTA had returned GameSpot's requests for comment as of press time.