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AI tools are making it easier than ever to pull games apart, and Take-Two Interactive have made it clear they won't tolerate any of it. Speaking on the company’s latest earnings call, CEO Strauss Zelnick said Take-Two is strengthening both its technical and legal defences against AI-assisted reverse engineering. The statement comes as we inch closer towards Take-Two's mammoth release - Grand Theft Auto 6.
Zelnick said the company is “highly focused on that, obviously”. He argued that Take-Two’s games have historically been largely protected from piracy thanks to their huge file sizes, their complexity and their reliance on online servers, adding that it would be “very difficult” to replicate the experience of playing its games as intended, anyway.
He acknowledged that this is “going to become more of a challenge”, though. “We are utterly focused on enhancing our technical defenses and enhancing our legal activities appropriately,” Zelnick said. He added that every entertainment business faces some level of piracy, but said he believes it will be “manageable”.
Why it matters for GTA VI
Zelnick didn’t mention GTA VI or PC specifically, but GTA VI launches next week on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S only, with no PC version announced. And the more immediate worry for Take-Two may not be reverse engineering at all, but emulation.
PS5 emulation has come a long way this year. Emulators like KytyPS5 and SharpEmu can now run a handful of PS5 games, including big hits, with some reaching a stable 60fps.
That’s a long way from running GTA VI, a much more demanding game, and a playable emulated version before an official PC release still seems unlikely. Emulation also requires game files dumped from a jailbroken console, which is presumably why GTA VI already requires the latest PS5 firmware to run.
Still, with emulation progressing this quickly, it’s easy to see why Take-Two are taking the threat seriously.
A long wait for PC players
If history is anything to go by, PC players will simply have to be patient. GTA V reached PC around 18 months after its original console launch, while Red Dead Redemption 2 took around a year. Rockstar haven’t said anything yet about a PC version of GTA VI.
