GTA 6 Won't be Affected by Possible Actor Strike; Take-Two CEO Reassures

Yesterday, Take-Two Interactive finally officially announced Grand Theft Auto VI, although we'll have to wait until December for the trailer. While discussing the publisher's financial results, investors askedwhether a potential strike of dubbing actors would delay the release of GTA 6, but CEO Strauss Zelnick assured that there is no such risk.

1. It is necessary to clarify the whole situation. Yesterday ended the months-long strike by SAG-AFTRA (the union for American actors), which concerned only contracts with studios producing movies and TV shows. The cooperation of members of this union with game companies is covered by another contract, a new version of which is currently being negotiated. Talks are so reluctant for now that SAG-AFTRA has asked its members to authorize a potential strike.
2. Strauss Zelnick is confident that the publishers will succeed in reaching an agreement with the actors. At the same time, he assured that Take Two Interactive's major projects are well protected from the negative impact of a possible strike.
3. Zelnick did not explain what this protection consists of, but one can guess that most of the voice and motion capture recordings have already been completed. In addition, if necessary, the company can use actors from outside the United States, especially those who are not unionized.

Take-Two Interactive's financial results

Other issues were also raised during the meeting. First of all we learned updated sales results of the publisher's biggest hits.

1. Grand Theft Auto V has already moved more than 190 million copies. The game thus maintains a sales pace of 5 million per quarter.
2. Sales of the entire GTA series has exceeded 410 million copies.
3. In turn Red Dead Redemption 2 has already moved more than 57 million copies, and sales of the entire series have exceeded 81 million copies.

Take-Two also reported that it is very pleased with the growth rate of users to the GTA subscription service, although exact numbers were not provided.

Take-Two's financial results are no longer so good. In the period July 1-September 30, this year, the publisher generated revenue of $1.7 billion, down 7% from the same quarter last year. The company failed to make a profit - it reported losses of $543.6 million.

The issue of FiveM and RedM

It is worth recalling that in August, Rockstar Games acquired Cfx.re, the team responsible for the popular mods, FiveM for GTA 5 and RedM for RDR2, which enable you to set up your own servers with unique content and custom gameplay. This issue was also raised during the conference.

Strauss Zelnick said that the team will continue to develop these mods and for the time being the company has no plans to make money from their creation. Rather, it is an investment in the future. As he explains, currently several hundred thousand people play on such servers, a relatively small number compared to the standard multiplayer modes of both brands. For that, the audience that watches gameplay recordings from fan servers (especially those of the RP type, i.e. involving role-playing) is huge.

So the publisher sees this category as growing. We would not be surprised if GTA 6 would receive official tools of this type, and the ability to put up our own servers with new content would become a key part of Rockstar Games' development of the series.

1. Rockstar Games - official website

Grand Theft Auto V

September 17, 2013

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• Take 2 Interactive
• Rockstar Games
• Red Dead (franchise)
• game sales
• GTA / Grand Theft Auto (franchise)