"It's difficult for me to believe that we would want to have interstitial advertising in a game that someone paid 70 or 80 bucks for. It would seem unfair." Those are the words of Strauss Zelnick, the head of Take-Two Interactive, speaking to The Game Business about a growing tension in the gaming industry: whether premium, full-price games should carry the sort of advertising that free-to-play titles have normalised.
Zelnick's position sounds principled, almost quaint. He acknowledged that in-game ads for free-to-play titles make sense based on the business model, but not for $70 or $80 games. His company's NBA 2K series offers a counterpoint to his own stance. Take-Two's NBA 2K has in-game ads because the game replicates the NBA experience, and as people know, ads are everywhere in stadiums. "You want to see advertising in a stadium, because you would if you were there in real life," Zelnick explained. Context matters.
But the industry isn't waiting for a consensus on fairness. Video game analyst Matthew Ball predicts that ads will come to pause and loading screens for console and PC games, arguing the move could help publishers absorb rising development costs without either laying off workers, cutting games, or pushing prices higher. The economic pressure is real. Ball noted that audiences in major markets "which are 60% of all PC console sales globally, are not spending more," while "costs are going up." He asked: "We don't want layoffs, we don't want fewer games, we don't just want the same games … We don't want price increases. The money needs to come in one way or another."
This isn't theoretical. EA already tried this approach with EA Sports UFC 4 in 2020, but the angry backlash against the in-game ad placements led the company to reconsider. After players made their objections clear, EA acknowledged that "integrating ads into the Replay and overlay experience is not welcome," and the advertisements were disabled.
Yet the pattern repeats. Take-Two's own NBA 2K series has persistently tested the boundaries. 2K faced criticism after adding unskippable ads in NBA 2K21, a game that retails at full price for $60, with the ads appearing one month post-launch during pre-game loading screens, though the publisher said the advertisements were not playing in the correct spot but did not commit to removing them. This reflects a calculation that many publishers have made: player anger is predictable, but profitability isn't guaranteed without exploring every revenue stream.
The tension Zelnick identifies is genuine, even if his company's track record muddies the waters. Gamers have repeatedly shown they'll push back on intrusive ads. But they've also kept buying these games. Publishers are watching closely to see where the line truly sits, and whether it shifts with each generation.
For now, GTA 6 arrives later this year without a commitment either way. Whether Zelnick's fairness argument holds up once the industry's cost pressures intensify further remains an open question.