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Take-Two’s CEO Strauss Zelnick has spoken about the impact of the GTA6 leaks about the company and, more importantly, the team.
While the GTA6 leaks seemed pretty significant at first as several videos and images were shown of the unfinished title, Take-Two’s CEO says it hadn’t negatively impacted the company in any way.
“As a business matter, we are not affected,” Zelnick said IGN (opens in new tab). “But as a personal issue and an emotional issue, our teams are affected.” While it’s a good thing the company wasn’t hurt by these unexpected leaks, they were still “very frustrating and upsetting to the team,” Zelnick said.
Stubborn leakage
There is a lot of excitement around GTA 6 as many fans have been waiting for the next installment in the Grand Theft Auto series for a decade since Rockstar released GTA 5 in 2013. According to a report (opens in new tab) by Bloomberg, developers working on GTA 6 suggest a release window of 2024 or 2025, which is still a long way off – what will I be playing in the meantime? The Saints Row reboot?
This only seemed to make things worse for those who had waited so long for the next GTA game
While we knew the game was in development, Rockstar was classically stoic about the progress and what would be featured in the new game. The first concrete details about the game came from the 90 leaked videos and screenshots of the early alpha build still in development.
While there have been rumors of the next GTA title before, such as the possibility of a female protagonist or the fact that the series could return to Vice City, these leaks were the first substantial piece of content for fans to sink their teeth into. But unfortunately, this only seemed to make things worse for those who had waited so long for the next GTA game.
Another ruined
Leaks can ruin a good game, no matter how excited I am about a title’s release. As an avid Pokémon fan, I find that whenever Nintendo announces a new title, I unplug the WiFi and barricade my door to protect myself from unwanted information.
In my opinion, most leaks spoil information about a game I’d like to discover for myself or make fans worry about something they have little to no control over.
After GTA6 was leaked, I saw a wave of confused and angry messages on Twitter about how disappointing the graphics of this highly anticipated game looked. It got so bad that some users defended the developers. In a Twitter message (opens in new tab)user Tom Henderson described how GTA6 was far enough away from the potential release window to not need good graphics.
The number of people saying that GTA 6 looks terrible is actually frightening. You’re looking at a game that’s over a year old and won’t be released for another 2 years?September 18, 2022
At the end of the day, while these leaks gave a better idea of what to expect from the game, the biggest impact I saw was people just getting frustrated or worried about the future of GTA.
No developer wants their game to start with that kind of rhetoric. So whatever happens in the future I will close my eyes and ears until the developers feel ready enough to give more information about GTA6as excited as I am about the release of this game.