WARNING: Contains images some might find disturbing. In this clip of actual gameplay, a user pays a prostitute for sex - which happens in graphic footage - and then punches the woman to the ground
This is the footage that lays bare the shocking sexual violence at the heart of a controversial hit video game.
In this clip of gameplay from Grand Theft Auto V, a user pays a prostitute for sex - which then unfolds in graphic footage - before the male character punches the woman to the ground, leaving her unconscious. It's also possible to kill the prostitute.
GTA V is an 18-rated game and its makers argue that it's the responsibility of parents to ensure children do not have access to the game.
However, the game is hugely popular with teenagers and many parents will be completely unaware of the rising level of explicit sex added to the game - providing yet another easy access point to potent sexual imagery.
Strauss Zelnick, the CEO of GTA's publisher Take-Two, has defended the game - even going as far as calling it 'beautiful art'.
"Look, this is a criminal setting. It is art, and I embrace that art - and it’s beautiful art - but it is gritty,' he told Bloomberg Television.
"We stand shoulder to shoulder with other major motion picture releases and major television shows that explore a similar universe.
"There’s hundreds of hours of gameplay... and there are plenty of things to do, and it’s an incredibly exciting environment. But can it be rough? Absolutely."
This latest version of long-running game series has souped-up its first-person perspective allowing players to indulge in ever more gratuitous acts of crime.
The game aims to create a fully immersive experience within a fictional city, with the aim of earning enough money through illegal acts to become a criminal kingpin.
The GTA series is notorious for its depictions of violence and has a long history of provoking moral panic as players get to rob, torture, carjack and murder their way around a lawless fictional city.
The game already featured strippers and prostitutes but, thanks to the much-improved first-person point-of-view, players can now watch as sex acts are performed on them.
GTA V launch LIVE: latest updates as the game is released on Xbox One and PS4Experts forecast that sexual interaction in games will increase in the future, paving the way towards an virtual reality version of the game where players truly feel that they are in Los Santos, the fictional city featured.
GTA V, which has been upgraded for the next-generation consoles Xbox One and PS4, is by no means alone in its graphic use of sex and violence in video games, which have an age rating system similar to film classification.
The likes of Call of Duty, Alien Isolation and others are rated for over-18s. This means that, like movies of the same rating, they contain scenes of a violent and/or sexual nature.
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