Take-Two Interactive at this time launched its quarterly earnings report for Q1 FY25, during which it revealed that its bookings for the yr had been flat in contrast with Q1 FY24. Following this report, the corporate held its earnings name during which it fielded questions, together with one about Take-Two’s view on user-generated content material (UGC) throughout its completely different franchises. In response to CEO Strauss Zelnick, Take-Two shouldn’t be planning to give attention to UGC within the near-future and doesn’t take into account UGC a significant component within the firm’s future.
Zelnick stated in the course of the name (in response to a query from Oppenheimer & Co about UGC and modding), “We’ve been very open-minded and we certainly are very excited about many things our users are delivering in their engagement with our titles and other people’s titles. Obviously we’re excited about what we see in the modding community for GTA, and we think that’s pretty exciting. At the end of the day, entertainment companies need to bring great entertainment to consumers. That is the starting point. And I’m not a believer that the industry will turn into a UGC-driven industry.”
Consumer-generated content material has grow to be a fixture of the video games trade prior to now few years, as companies have sprung from creating content material on UGC-friendly platforms. Zelnick acknowledged these, saying, “However, for certain titles, for example Roblox, they are really more platforms than they are individual entertainment titles. And I think at this company we pride ourselves on making the best entertainment of any sort [sound muffled] and if consumers want to add to that and enhance that for their own use, generally speaking we would like to enable that behavior.”
As Zelnick acknowledged, modding is a staple of the Grand Theft Auto neighborhood, serving to maintain curiosity within the title for over a decade. Grand Theft Auto V was the most-watched sport on Twitch in 2023, in accordance with SullyGnome. As a substitute, Zelnick famous that Take-Two will defend their very own IP — in 2022, the corporate requested MyMetaverse to take away its NFTs from GTAservers, saying it couldn’t permit “sale of virtual currencies, generating revenue via corporate sponsorships or in-game integrations, or the use of cryptocurrencies or crypto assets.”
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Zelnick stated, “We’re protective of our intellectual property, we’re protective, of course, of other people’s intellectual properties, but we do sense that that can be a positive addition to the industry. I don’t think that it will define our company or the industry, however.” Take-Two’s upcoming main releases embrace Grand Theft Auto VI and Civilization VII, each of that are scheduled to launch someday subsequent yr.