Take-Two Interactive right this moment launched its quarterly earnings report for Q1 FY25, during which it revealed that its bookings for the yr have 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 keeping with CEO Strauss Zelnick, Take-Two just isn’t planning to give attention to UGC within the near-future and doesn’t think about UGC a significant factor within the firm’s future.
Zelnick mentioned 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 actually are very enthusiastic about many issues our customers are delivering of their engagement with our titles and different individuals’s titles. Clearly we’re enthusiastic about what we see within the modding neighborhood for GTA, and we predict that’s fairly thrilling. On the finish of the day, leisure corporations must deliver nice leisure to customers. That’s the place to begin. And I’m not a believer that the trade will flip right into a UGC-driven trade.”
Person-generated content material has turn into 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, “Nonetheless, for sure titles, for instance Roblox, they’re actually extra platforms than they’re particular person leisure titles. And I feel at this firm we satisfaction ourselves on making the most effective leisure of any kind [sound muffled] and if customers need to add to that and improve that for their very own use, typically talking we wish to allow that conduct.”
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, based on SullyGnome. As an alternative, Zelnick famous that Take-Two will shield their very own IP — in 2022, the corporate requested MyMetaverse to take away its NFTs from GTAservers, saying it couldn’t enable “sale of digital currencies, producing income through company sponsorships or in-game integrations, or the usage of cryptocurrencies or crypto belongings.”
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Zelnick mentioned, “We’re protecting of our mental property, we’re protecting, in fact, of different individuals’s mental properties, however we do sense that that may be a constructive addition to the trade. I don’t assume that it’ll outline our firm or the trade, nevertheless.” Take-Two’s upcoming main releases embrace Grand Theft Auto VI and Civilization VII, each of that are scheduled to launch someday subsequent yr.
