Take-Two Pays $25 Million to Keep Top Grand Theft Auto Talent
- March 14, 2006 15:42 PM PST
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Publisher shells out to secure the future of the GTA series
Take-Two Interactive has paid some $25 million in stock, as well as royalties, to the top Rockstar talent responsible for the Grand Theft Auto games.
The deal was highlighted in a 10-Q filing yesterday, in which Take-Two said that the company is "highly dependent on the expertise, skills and knowledge of certain of our Rockstar employees responsible for content creation and development of Grand Theft Auto." The timing on the deal is interesting -- just weeks ago, a group of Halo and Half-Life veterans left their respective studios in order to form Giant Bite Games, a next-gen development studio. Take-Two apparently felt it couldn't afford to have a developer exodus of its own, and thus paid extra in order to secure the future of the Grand Theft Auto series on the next-gen consoles.
This arrangement also comes even as Take-Two has taken criticism for being over-reliant on the Grand Theft Auto games. The GTA series is projected to be worth some $900 million over the next five years alone, some 80 percent of Take Two's market value.
According to NPD sales tracking, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on the PlayStation 2 re-claimed the top sales point for the month of February 2006, some 16 months after it launched.
