Of all the ways we expected to learn something new about the Grand Theft Auto franchise in 2026, a trademark dispute with a sandwich restaurant was not on the list, but hey, here we are.
Take-Two Interactive, the parent company of Rockstar Games, recently filed to block a company called DT Global Investment Holdings from trademarking the name "Vice City Subs" for a planned sandwich and restaurant business. The filing was submitted to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on February 13, 2026, and in it, Take-Two's lawyers laid out the history and commercial significance of the "Vice City" name within the GTA franchise. Except buried in the documentation was a sales figure that Take-Two hadn't publicly disclosed in nearly two decades.
According to the legal filing, first spotted by journalist Stephen Totilo of Game File, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories has sold over 7 million copies worldwide since its 2006 release on the PlayStation Portable. The last time Take-Two reported a sales figure for the game was in March 2008, when it stood at 4.5 million copies. This means that the oft-forgotten and criminally underrated Vice City Stories quietly moved an additional 2.5 million units over the past 18 years without anyone really knowing about it.
Vice City Stories was a portable companion to Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, set in the same neon-soaked 1980s version of Miami but following a different protagonist, Victor Vance. It was well-received at launch, and notably featured musician Phil Collins as himself in what remains one of the more memorable celebrity cameos in gaming history, complete with a playable concert mission. However, what's interesting is that the legal filing also included sales data for the original GTA: Vice City, and for that game, Take-Two's lawyers cited the same figure the company reported in 2008: 17.5 million copies. That number hasn't budged in 18 years of filings, which is either remarkable restraint or a very curious omission.
There's virtually no chance that the game starring Tommy Vercetti, one of the most iconic and culturally significant video games ever made, hasn't sold additional copies since 2008. The game has been re-released on mobile platforms, included in the Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition bundle, and made available across multiple digital storefronts. The idea that it moved exactly zero additional units since 2008 while a PSP spin-off quietly added 2.5 million is, to put it gently, implausible. More likely, Take-Two's lawyers updated the number they had readily available documentation for and left the other one as is. Legal filings aren't quarterly earnings reports. They're built from whatever data the attorneys can quickly pull together, and sometimes that means you get a snapshot that's partially current and partially ancient.
