Take-Two CEO Says Piracy Is a “Fact of Life” Ahead of GTA 6 Release; Will Tackle It With Legal & Technical Work
Piracy when it comes to movies, TV shows, and even video games has been a problem since forever, and with a release as big as Grand Theft Auto 6, you can bet pirates will do their damnest to have a bootleg version up and running as soon as they can.
Given GTA 6 is only available on consoles at launch, and with Sony actively pushing security updates on the PS5 to prevent this from happening, it’s going to be a lot harder to pull off.
That said, GTA 6’s parent company, Take-Two Interactive, does know that this is something that will potentially happen, and in fact, is even anticipating it somewhat.
Take-Two Boss Says Piracy “Is a Fact of Life”
In a video interview with the Wall Street Journal about GTA 6, the subject of piracy was brought up, with the interviee asking, “The piracy question. I mean video games used to be the one area that were really was really hard to pirate. you’re starting to see, you just saw something, I think it was last week, where someone took some PlayStation 4 games and put them on Roblox using AI tools to kind of recreate them. How worried are you about that? And how are you thinking about that?”
Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick didn’t really mince words, and admitted that piracy is a “fact of life,” and mentioned that this has been a problem for all mediums of entertainment — movies, music and yes, games.
Zelnick said, “I’m worried about everything all the time despite being very laid-back. Look, you know, piracy is a fact of life and I’ve been in every entertainment business there is. And we, you know, when we’re when I was in the movie business, we figured, you know, 10 to 20% of our business was pirated at any given time in the record business because I was there in the record business from 1994 to 2000, like by the by, like 2005, I would argue that 80% of the market was pirated. Now that’s way back down again.So piracy is a fact of life in the entertainment business, as you point out, because of the file sizes and the complexity; piracy is less of an issue in interactive entertainment, but it’s not been a non-issue. And in the event that it turns into an issue, we address it the same way every other business does, which is, you know, withl egal work, right? And then with technical work, and we’ll have to do both. But I think it’s fair to say that piracy is going to be an issue in our business going forward.”
The Take-Two boss didn’t end there, adding, We’re just going to have to be vigilant about it. Now, a little more complex because for all of our games, you know, really all of our games, you have to be connected with our servers to have a good experience. So, like piracy, like how are you really going to do? You really set up competitive servers is really going to be a good experience? It won’t be a great experience, but it’s not it’s not nothing, right?”
I gather, Zelnick understands that when GTA 6 is eventually released on PC, it will be much, much harder to combat piracy, given the system’s open-endedness. While the game hasn’t been confirmed for PC, it’s a given that it will appear on the platform, and rumors point to Q1 2027 as the release window for GTA 6 on PC.
If Rockstar plans to pump out seasonal events and whatnot in GTA 6, such as having Christmas decor adorn the streets and buildings of Leonida, that might combat piracy somewhat, given the game will need to be connected to Rockstar’s servers for any kind of additional tweaks and content.
Will we see GTA 6 playable on PC’s via the PS5’s homebrew scene after launch? I wouldn’t bet against that, but you be sure both Sony and Rockstar will do the best they can to prevent it from happening.
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