Take-Two's Zelnick on piracy, two weeks before GTA 6: 'a fact of life,' but less of a threat to games

Strauss Zelnick, the CEO of Grand Theft Auto VI's publisher, Take-Two Interactive, expects piracy and says Take-Two is ready if it gets serious. Asked at The Wall Street Journal's WSJ Tech: California conference in Napa on Nov. 4 about Roblox games that copy Take-Two's, he turned to piracy, joked that he worries about everything despite being laid-back, and called it "a fact of life."

His argument, as Notebookcheck and Beebom report it, is that games are harder to pirate than films or music, though not immune, and that Take-Two would fight back with lawyers first. The remarks spread on Nov. 5 and 6, two weeks before GTA 6 comes out on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.

What he said

• Film and music. When he was in the movie business, he said, the industry figured 10% to 20% of the market was pirated at any time. He worked in the record business from 1994 to 2000, and by the mid-2000s, he argued, about 80% of that market was pirated. It has fallen a long way since.
• Games. File sizes and complexity make piracy less of an issue in interactive entertainment, he said, though it has never been no issue at all.
• Servers. Take-Two's games need a connection to its servers for a good experience, he noted, so anyone pirating them would have to run competing servers of their own.
• If it gets worse. Take-Two would respond the way other businesses do: legal work, then technical work, and it would need both.

He didn't mention GTA 6's protections or any console by name, and neither Take-Two nor Rockstar Games has said what anti-piracy measures the game uses.

How it applies to GTA 6

Some of what he described already fits the game:

• Size. The download is up to 212 GB, and pre-loading opens Nov. 10.
• No disc. Even the boxed version holds a download code, so every copy comes through the PlayStation Store or the Xbox Store.
• Consoles only. GTA 6 launches on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, and no PC version has been announced.

His point about servers was about Take-Two's games in general. For GTA 6 itself, the PlayStation Store lists offline play, and Rockstar hasn't said which features need a connection. Our online guide has what the stores say.

Legal work first

Take-Two has already gone the legal route over GTA 6's leaks. It sought DMCA subpoenas reaching Discord, Microsoft, X and YouTube to identify a leaker, then asked a federal court in New York, under seal, for a narrower second Discord subpoena, TorrentFreak reported on Aug. 31. Our story on the leaker known as Cyberleek covers the latest threat to put out a playable build, which nobody has backed up with proof.

The risk for players is fakes

Files claiming to be GTA 6 have already spread online, and some have carried malware. The only real downloads come from the PlayStation Store and the Xbox Store, including for boxed copies, and our file size guide shows how to spot the fakes.

The rest of the talk

Zelnick's Nov. 4 talk has already given us three stories: his answer to the question about Take-Two's hits, how GTA 6's second delay reached him and what he said about AI. Take-Two reports its quarterly results on Monday, Nov. 9, and our preview has what to listen for.