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Strauss Zelnick
“I’m worried about everything all the time, despite being very laid-back. Piracy is a fact of life and 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. 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. So piracy is a fact of life.” via an interview with WSJ.
We’ve seen more of Grand Theft Auto 6 than we were meant to at this stage. All we were meant to have was a Netflix special, some sparse previews, and a very late launch trailer. But thanks to a certain leaker, some players have been able to see way more than we ever imagined.
This was both good for those who wanted to see more of the game before forking over $100 for its ultimate edition, and bad for the players who wanted an unsullied first look at GTA 6. The leaks gradually escalated, with the party responsible even threatening to leak the entire build and declaring they’d activate a dead man’s switch if Take-Two pursued legal action against them.
“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,” Zelnick says. “And in the event where it turns into an issue we address it in the same way every other business does, which is with legal work and then with technical work, and we’ll have to do both.” And it’s done exactly that. Despite the threats, Take-Two subpoenaed Discord for more user information concerning the leaks, which has since been granted by a court.
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“I think it’s fair to say that piracy is going to be an issue in our business going forward—we’re just going to have to be vigilant about it,” Zelnick adds. “Now, it’s a little more complex because for all of our games you have to be connected with our servers to have a good experience. So with piracy are you really going to set up competitive servers? Is it really going to be a good experience? It won’t be a great experience. But it’s not nothing.”
