Heavy is the crown when you're releasing a blockbuster game like GTA 6. The sales will be huge, but it's going to be the target number one for illegal redistribution. Strauss Zelnick, the CEO of Rockstar's owner Take-Two, isn't overtly concerned, mostly because he accepts this is just a facet of the industry.
He responded to a query about such things during a sit-down at WSJ Tech. "Piracy is a fact of life," he starts.
"I've been in every entertainment business there is, and when I was in the movie business we figured 10-20% at any given time," he explains. "In the record business, because I was in the record business from 1994 to 2000 by the mid 2000s I would argue that 80% of the market was pirated, now that's way back down again."
He admits he's definitely concerned, just as he worries about every aspect of video games and entertainment. But the difficulties surrounding contemporary hardware, like how big the file sizes are and getting releases to run, mitigate the problem organically. They don't deter everyone, though.
"It's not been a non-issue," Zelnick adds. "And in the event that it turns into an issue we address it the same way every other business does, which is with legal work, and then with technical work, and we'll have to do both."
We've seen Take-Two be cutthroat when it wants to be, since an unofficial GTA 5 multiplayer platform was shut down earlier this year. Zelnick's comments suggest he's not naïve to the rash of activity we'll likely get on the back of the sixth mainline Grand Theft Auto. I suspect Rockstar is one studio whose bottom line won't be affected much by how many fans try to get the game for free.
