San Francisco transforms into ‘GTA’-style playground in homemade video game

A new video game inspired by the wildly popular “Grand Theft Auto” franchise is generating buzz for letting players explore every inch of a digitized San Francisco.

Thijs Simonian, a Stanford University computer science student, introduced the homemade game that he said he built with data from Apple Maps.

In clips he shared on social media, a player can be seen getting into cars to drive along the city’s roads or even using a hang glider to fly across its iconic skyline.

Simonian reported on Monday night that that game had logged 884 hours of playtime and users “walking” 15,913 miles of San Francisco.

As more people played, Simonian said he added more features in response to the demand, including teleportation to any address, multi-player capabilities, avatar choices and shareable location links.

“This is so fun, I get to build new game features all night while hundreds of people try them out!” he wrote.

“Genuinely this made me emotional,” wrote one user who said he lived in San Francisco for 20 years. “Was weird as hell walking around my backyard.”

Others also had fun exploring seeking out their old homes.

“Hang gliding past my old condo,” wrote angel investor Bobby Goodlatte, who shared pictures of the property from the game.

Some offered tongue-in-cheek jokes related to the city’s efforts to move away from a reputation of being crime-ridden.

“Climb buildings and steal cars? So a San Francisco simulator,” commented crypto executive Steven Lubka.

“You can already steal cars in San Francisco, this isn’t that impressive,” wrote another user.

One used the game to remark on the housing crisis in California and the Bay Area.

“Housing supply is so bad in SF they’re makings video games where you can explore it,” a user joked.

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