A week after Rockstar approved mods from Grand Theft Auto Online's roleplaying community, Take-Two has removed a mod for Grand Theft Auto V that featured AI-generated dialogue.
08.08.2023 - 21:05 / gamesindustry.biz
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Take-Two Interactive today reported its financial results for the quarter ended June 30. The company continued to post significant losses, but the top-line growth of recent quarters has slowed down due to the acquisition of Zynga closing partway through the year-ago quarter, making for more difficult comparisons going forward.
Take-Two's earnings report this quarter looks a lot like the last few, with significant gains in revenue and bookings paired with significant losses.
That's been the pattern ever since Take-Two's acquisition of Zynga closed during the first quarter of its previous fiscal year, but now that the combined Take-Two/Zynga is no longer being compared against the performance of Take-Two on its own, that top-line growth has started to slow.
One part of the business that still posted eye-catching growth was recurrent consumer spending, with net bookings in the virtual currency/DLC/in-game ads catch-all category growing 38% year-over-year.
Take-Two has put a lot of emphasis on growing its recurrent consumer spending over the years, so we ask Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick in an earnings briefing whether that was due more to increasing the number of players paying for add-ons, or if that was due to a similar cohort of paying players significantly increasing how much they spend on add-ons.
"It could be either mathematically, but our goal is to reach the broadest audience we can and serve them as effectively as we can," Zelnick says.
But if recurrent consumer spending increases because people are paying more on average instead of reaching a broader audience, would there be a ceiling on how much Take-Two could expect that figure to be able to grow?
"We're still well below that limit if you look at our competitors," Zelnick says, "and we want to be there because we want to make sure that consumers not only have a great entertainment experience, but they feel that the economics were sound too.
"You can have a great experience, but if it feels like you overpaid for it, it taints the experience and you don't want to repeat it. We never want consumers to feel like they spent too much, even if they got something they loved for it. So our goal is not to max out what a consumer can spend; our goal is to entertain consumers and reach as many consumers as we can."
As for the continued losses, Take-Two has cautioned investors that it expects to finish the current year at least half a billion in the red, but it has also given them something to look forward to with an $8 billion net bookings forecast for fiscal 2025, which many have taken to mean that Grand Theft Auto 6 will debut during that year, even if the company
A week after Rockstar approved mods from Grand Theft Auto Online's roleplaying community, Take-Two has removed a mod for Grand Theft Auto V that featured AI-generated dialogue.
Take-Two has enforced a shutdown of a Grand Theft Auto 5 mod relying on generative AI, its creator has claimed.
A single GTA 5 mod has rekindled the age-old shouting match about the precise legality and contribution of videogame mods, in the eyes of developers, publishers and players - while also threatening to trigger fresh debate on the use of large language models, aka AI, in game development. The mod in question, "AI Powered GTA V: Story Mode with AI NPCs" sees you investigating a cult of weirdo AI worshippers, with characters capable of real-time AI-generated dialogue. It's now been struck from several sites by GTA 5 publisher Take-Two Interactive.
The developer of a Grand Theft Auto V mod which gave players the ability to chat to NPCs using AI says it’s been removed by Rockstar‘s parent company Take-Two Interactive.
Earlier this month, we covered a new GTA V mod crafted with Inworld AI's Character Engine by modder Bloc. That mod added a whole new storyline to Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto V, though its defining feature was the support for completely unscripted conversation with non-player characters (NPCs). It wasn't Bloc's first attempt at injecting generative AI technology in a game, as he previously did it with Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
«No one from Take-Two Interactive contacted and ask me anything prior to this, they just took down the video out of nowhere.»
Take-Two has chalked up another body in the GTA modding scene, and barely a week after Rockstar turned heads by buying up the FiveM mod makers. This time the victim was the creator of Sentient Streets, the AI mod that allowed you to chat with, cajole and extort the NPCs of Los Santos that we covered last week. Rockstar's parent company was none too happy with it, apparently, so all trace of it has now been blasted from the internet.
A popular mod for GTA 5 has been removed from Nexus Mods due to a DMCA takedown from Take-Two Interactive, according to its creator.
The creator of an eye-catching Grand Theft Auto 5 mod that promised a living, AI-powered story mode has admitted defeat after Take-Two hauled the mod offline.
The creator of a GTA AI mod has had their mod shutdown entirely by Take-Two.
There’s a lot of contention at the moment regarding the re-release of Red Dead Redemption. Some fans are not pleased about Rockstar charging $50 for a PS4 port of a 13-year-old game, but Take-Two’s CEO doesn’t appear to agree with them.
Grand Theft Auto V is still performing above expectations and drove results at Rockstar Games parent company Take-Two, and all signs point to a sequel close on the horizon.