Meet Strauss Zelnick, the Square CEO Behind ‘Grand Theft Auto’

Strauss Zelnick avoids vice. His firm makes billions promoting it.

The longtime CEO and chairman of Take-Two Interactive Software is the straight-laced chief behind certainly one of the bestselling and most violent leisure properties of all time, “Grand Theft Auto.”

In the gritty crime-drama sequence, which is ready to re-emerge this fall with its first new installment in 13 years, gamers interact in gun fights, financial institution heists, drug trafficking, and intercourse with prostitutes. Zelnick, who’s in command of guaranteeing “GTA VI” lives as much as its world-historic hype, is a household man, philanthropist, and exercise buff. He says he would not drink, smoke, or personal a gun, and he is by no means gotten as a lot as a rushing ticket.

“I train most days, sometimes twice a day,” the 68-year-old tells me in a wide-ranging interview at Take-Two’s Manhattan headquarters. “I’m as much into fitness as I’ve ever been.”

The head of certainly one of the world’s largest video-game makers would not even play video video games, some extent he generally mentions throughout his frequent appearances on CNBC packages like “Squawk Box” and “Closing Bell.”

“I don’t think being consumer-in-chief really helps a CEO be effective in this business,” he tells me. He does watch others play. “I see the whole thing. I’m just not the one holding the controller.”

The stakes for “GTA VI” are amongst the highest for any product launched this decade. Cinematic, narrative video games of their dimension and caliber value lots of of tens of millions of {dollars} to make, way over most Hollywood films, and promote for round $70 to $80 a pop.

Zelnick will not say how a lot Take-Two has spent on “GTA VI” aside from that “it was expensive.” Several {industry} analysts instructed me the tab is probably going in the $1 billion to $1.5 billion vary. They additionally anticipate the recreation to surpass the present worth ceiling for a Triple-A title, with one predicting it may attain three digits.

The fifth version of the GTA franchise, which has bought greater than 225 million copies worldwide, surpassed $1 billion in gross sales inside the first three days of its launch in 2013. It was a report for a protracted shot at the time and nonetheless is at the moment, says veteran game-industry analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities.

In the years since, international shopper spending on video-game software program and {hardware} has greater than tripled to $250 billion, in line with analytics agency Aldora Intelligence. But the world has additionally modified, elevating questions on whether or not the GTA franchise can seize a brand new era of gamers and lure again older followers who’ve drifted away. Consumers are actually dealing with higher prices for gashealthcare, and recreation consoles. Sony even raised the worth of its practically six-year-old PlayStation 5 by about $100 final month.

The stress surrounding “GTA VI” is not simply economical. It’s additionally technological.

Take-Two’s practically 13,000 staff are inspired to make use of AI tools resembling Anthropic’s Claude and Google’s Gemini. Zelnick says AI is already taking up some low-value, time-consuming duties, liberating workers to concentrate on extra significant work.

“AI will vastly increase efficiency and productivity and give us an opportunity to enhance quality,” he says.

Still, Zelnick is skeptical that these beneficial properties will translate into cheaper or faster-made blockbuster video games. The new instruments are inclined to gasoline larger ambitions somewhat than cut back manufacturing calls for, he says.

“Everyone understands this creates more work, not less work,” he says. “When you make certain things easier, your appetite gets greater.”

Not each video-game participant or worker has as rosy an outlook on AI as the CEO. A 2025 survey by gaming analytics agency Quantic Foundry discovered that 85% of gamers held a unfavorable view of generative AI, particularly when it is used for inventive components resembling artwork and storytelling. Among industry professionalsgreater than half now say generative AI is having a unfavorable affect on the sector, a pointy shift from just some years in the past, in line with a January examine collectively performed by the GDC Festival of Gaming, analysis agency Omdia, and the media outlet Game Developer.

Zelnick says Take-Two’s staff largely do not share that skepticism, and that they have not pushed again in opposition to AI at the firm’s townhall-style conferences. While the firm hasn’t formally polled workers, he says an worker in Europe not too long ago requested why the know-how is not extra accessible, because it wasn’t initially deployed throughout all of Take-Two’s a number of dozen workplaces worldwide.

“We’re a forward-thinking company,” he says. “Most people think technology is a good thing in the video-game business.”

Investors, nonetheless, have been skittish. After Google launched its AI game-making software Genie 3 to the public in January, shares of Take-Two and a number of other different video-game firms tumbled. In a current analysis be aware, Morgan Stanley analyst Matthew Cost wrote that Genie 3 highlights how AI instruments may decrease limitations to recreation creation “and potentially compete with current video game producers.” Take-Two’s inventory is down roughly 11% 12 months so far.

Zelnick dismisses these issues.

“Tools that enable us to make great assets have always been available to our competitors,” he says. “Why is it that we’re making hits and others are not?”

Zelnick additionally notes that gamers have been in a position to make their very own model of “Grand Theft Auto” and different professionally made video games for many years by partaking in what’s often known as modding. While a few of these so-called mods draw hundreds of gamers, they do not pose a risk to Take-Two, because it has a monetary stake in that ecosystem. The firm acquired certainly one of the largest GTA modding platforms, FiveM, in 2023 for an undisclosed sum.

“The way we looked at it is, wow, there are hundreds of thousands of people out there who like to engage with GTA in this way,” Zelnick says. “How about if instead of trying to beat them, we join them?”

While the firm has launched “GTA V” growth packs and followers have produced mods of the recreation over the years, some staff at the firm’s Rockstar Games studio have been working for greater than a decade on “GTA VI.” Amid that sprawling manufacturing cycle, Zelnick says morale has remained wholesome.

“It’s Rockstar leadership that engages people in this extraordinary mission to create something perfect,” he says. “I think people are bought into that.”

Delaying a recreation’s launch is typically mandatory, since so-called crunch — a legacy {industry} time period for an intense, overtime-heavy push to complete a product to satisfy a deadline — is not a part of how Take-Two operates at the moment, says Zelnick. “GTA VI” was originally due out in the fall of 2025, then May 2026, and now it is scheduled for launch on November 19.

“It’s sort of like when I was in college. I never pulled an all-nighter because I was good about doing my homework,” Zelnick says. “You do your homework, you don’t pull an all-nighter.”

A Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School graduate, Zelnick has been entrepreneurial since he was a teen. His first gigs included babysitting, instructing guitar, and being a birthday-party clown.

He got here to Take-Two in 2007 after serving as president and CEO of BMG Entertainment, and earlier than that as CEO of video-game firm Crystal Dynamics, and president and working chief of Twentieth Century Fox. He rallied shareholders to take over Take-Two’s board and rebuild the firm, which at the time traded round $14 a share. He says he was drawn to it by his long-standing perception in the progress potential of interactive entertainment. Today, Take-Two trades at greater than $225 a share, has an almost $40 billion market cap, and generates round $6.5 billion in annual web bookings.

Zelnick, who additionally helms ZMC, a private-equity agency he based in 2001, says he would not ever need to retire. He has no plans, although, to participate in the longevity drug trend that a few of his tech-industry friends have embraced in recent times.

“I pay a lot of attention to it because I find it interesting, but I’m really allergic to bro science,” he says. “I’m really allergic to putting things into your body that are not double-blind tested, proven safe and effective, and approved by the FDA.”

Even with Take-Two’s report of hit franchises past “Grand Theft Auto” — together with “NBA2K,” “Red Dead Redemption,” and “Borderlands” for consoles and PCs, and cellular video games like “Words With Friends” and “Monster Legends” — Zelnick would not take previous wins as a right. The focus, he says, is at all times ahead.

“Arrogance is the enemy of continued success.”

Sarah E. Needleman is Business Insider’s management & office correspondence.