Take-Two Interactive is the New York City video game holding company that owns Rockstar Games and 2K, along with the mobile publisher Zynga. Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, NBA 2K, Borderlands, BioShock, Civilization, Mafia, XCOM, and WWE 2K all sit under the Take-Two umbrella. Strauss Zelnick runs the company as chairman and CEO, and the stock trades on NASDAQ under TTWO. The company's fiscal 2027 forecast is built around Grand Theft Auto VI, which Rockstar has set for November 19, 2026 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.
Take-Two works differently from Electronic Arts or Ubisoft. Its labels run with a lot of independence, which is why Rockstar feels like its own company and the Take-Two name rarely shows up front and center on a box or in a trailer. Plenty of people who have played every GTA game couldn't name the company that actually owns it.
I have sunk a lot of time into the Grand Theft Auto series, and even I forget that Take-Two owns Rockstar sometimes.
Ryan Brant and Mark E. Seremet founded Take-Two Interactive in New York City in September 1993. Brant was the son of publisher Peter Brant and had graduated from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania the year before. The early Take-Two was a small PC developer and publisher, and it went public in 1997. Through the late 1990s it grew mostly by buying other companies, including the Global Star Software label and Gathering of Developers, which Take-Two acquired in 2000 and folded into Global Star in September 2004. Global Star was later absorbed into 2K Play in 2007.
Brant left Take-Two in October 2006 during an investigation into backdated stock options, and in February 2007 he pleaded guilty to falsifying business records. He died in 2019.
The deal that defined Take-Two happened in March 1998, when the company bought BMG Interactive from Bertelsmann for about $14.2 million. BMG Interactive had published the original Grand Theft Auto, made by DMA Design in Scotland. Later that year Take-Two turned the unit into Rockstar Games, based in New York City and led by brothers Sam and Dan Houser. Take-Two bought DMA Design outright in 1999, and that studio became Rockstar North in Edinburgh.
Before Grand Theft Auto III landed on PS2, Rockstar pitched it to Microsoft as an exclusive for the upcoming Xbox. According to Kevin Bachus, who ran Xbox third-party relations at the time, Microsoft's executives passed because they doubted the 2D series could make the jump to 3D. Bachus told the story in the 2021 documentary Power On: The Story of Xbox. The gaming landscape would probably be a lot different today if Microsoft had taken that deal, but hindsight is 20/20, I suppose.
Grand Theft Auto III hit the PlayStation 2 in 2001 and changed everything for the company. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City followed in 2002 and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas in 2004. Take-Two bought Angel Studios in 2002, which became Rockstar San Diego and went on to finish Red Dead Revolver and lead development on Red Dead Redemption. The same year Take-Two picked up the Max Payne rights from Remedy Entertainment and 3D Realms. Bully, Manhunt, Midnight Club, and L.A. Noire all came out under the Rockstar label as well. Dan Houser left Rockstar in 2020, while Sam Houser still runs the studio.
Take-Two launched 2K in January 2005 after buying Visual Concepts and Kush Games from Sega. Visual Concepts made the ESPN-branded NBA 2K and NFL 2K games, and after the sale the basketball series dropped the ESPN name and became the backbone of 2K Sports. NBA 2K has been an annual release ever since, and it sat at the top of the contributors list in Take-Two's August 2026 earnings release.
The 2K Games side filled out quickly. Take-Two bought Firaxis Games, the home of Sid Meier's Civilization, in 2005 and Irrational Games in 2006. Irrational released BioShock in 2007, and 2K published Gearbox Software's Borderlands in 2009. Firaxis rebooted XCOM with XCOM: Enemy Unknown in 2012, and in January 2013 Take-Two bought the WWE license out of the THQ bankruptcy, which is how the wrestling games became WWE 2K.
Irrational closed in 2014 after BioShock Infinite, and creative director Ken Levine relaunched his small team as Ghost Story Games in 2017. Hangar 13 has handled the Mafia series since Mafia III in 2016, including Mafia: The Old Country in August 2025. Take-Two priced The Old Country at $49.99 and later said it beat internal expectations. Charging $49.99 for a focused story game instead of $70 was a smart read of the market, and it's a pricing approach more big publishers should copy.
The first major mess for Take-Two was Hot Coffee in 2005. A PC mod unlocked a sex minigame that had been left in the code of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and the ESRB changed the game's rating from M to Adults Only. Retailers pulled San Andreas off shelves until Take-Two shipped a version with the content removed, and the company later settled with the FTC over the incident.
After Brant's exit, a shareholder group backed by Strauss Zelnick's ZelnickMedia took control of the board in 2007, and Zelnick became chairman. He added the CEO title in 2011. In February 2008, Electronic Arts made a hostile bid for Take-Two at $25.74 a share, roughly $2 billion. The Take-Two board turned the offer down as too low with Grand Theft Auto IV about to launch, and EA let the bid expire in August 2008. Considering what GTA V went on to earn, that rejection aged very well for Take-Two.
Grand Theft Auto V is the reason Take-Two looks the way it does today. The game launched in September 2013 on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, then came back on PS4, Xbox One, PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S, with GTA Online running alongside it the entire time. In its February 2026 earnings report, Take-Two put GTA V at more than 225 million units sold and the Grand Theft Auto series at nearly 465 million. Red Dead Redemption 2 had passed 82 million, with the Red Dead series over 110 million. The same report had Borderlands past 100 million and Civilization approaching 80 million.
That catalog is a huge part of how Take-Two makes money. In the quarter ending June 30, 2026, 84% of its net bookings came from recurrent consumer spending, which covers in-game purchases, virtual currency, and add-on content instead of new game sales. GTA Online Shark Cards have been paying the bills for more than a decade. Personally, I spent way too much money on Shark Cards for GTA V.
Take-Two closed its $12.7 billion acquisition of Zynga in May 2022. Zynga brought over FarmVille, Words With Friends, Zynga Poker, and puzzle games like Toon Blast and Empires & Puzzles that it had picked up through its own acquisitions. Mobile is now about half of the business. In the June 2026 quarter, mobile accounted for 50% of Take-Two's GAAP net revenue and 53% of its net bookings. Zynga's upcoming releases include Top Goal and CSR 3 on iOS and Android.
Take-Two also launched Private Division in 2017 to publish games from independent studios, including The Outer Worlds and Kerbal Space Program 2. It sold the label in late 2024 as part of a broader push to cut costs.
2K published Borderlands for 15 years before Take-Two bought the developer. In March 2024, Take-Two agreed to buy The Gearbox Entertainment Company from Embracer Group for $460 million, and the deal closed that June. Along with Gearbox Software, Take-Two got Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, Homeworld, Risk of Rain, Brothers in Arms, and Duke Nukem.
Borderlands 4 launched September 12, 2025. Take-Two said it set the series record for concurrent players on Steam, but it also admitted that PC performance problems made the launch softer than expected.
Take-Two announced a cost-cutting plan in April 2024 that eliminated about five percent of its workforce, roughly 600 jobs, and cancelled some games in development. Reports of smaller layoffs at 2K studios followed in 2025, including Cat Daddy Games and 31st Union, the studio making Project ETHOS. In the quarter ending June 30, 2026, Take-Two also took a $43.4 million impairment charge after deciding not to continue an unannounced game from an outside developer.
The bigger labor story is at Rockstar. On October 30, 2025, Rockstar fired 34 employees, 31 in the UK and three in Canada. The Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain (IWGB) says they were targeted for organizing a union through a private Discord server, while Rockstar maintains they were fired for gross misconduct tied to leaking confidential information about GTA VI. Rockstar developers formally applied for voluntary IWGB recognition in June 2026. A judge turned down the union's request for interim relief in January 2026, and the full employment tribunal began in Glasgow on September 10, 2026. Closing submissions were pushed to November 17 and 18, 2026, and the ruling is still pending.
Grand Theft Auto VI comes out November 19, 2026 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. Rockstar originally targeted fall 2025, delayed the game in May 2025 to May 26, 2026, and delayed it again in November 2025 to the current date.
Take-Two shares closed down 8.1% on November 7, 2025, the day after the second delay was announced. Zelnick has since said the game ended up about 18 months behind its original target.
Take-Two reaffirmed the November 19 date in its August 7, 2026 earnings release, and Rockstar followed with the Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look gameplay reveal on August 27. The game is set in Leonida, Rockstar's version of Florida built around Vice City, with Lucia and Jason as the two lead characters. Take-Two expects fiscal 2027 net bookings of $8.0 billion to $8.2 billion and has said GTA VI drives that forecast.
GTA VI has no PC release date. At Take-Two's annual shareholder meeting on September 17, 2026, Zelnick said PC keeps getting more important to the company, but Rockstar's track record points to PC coming later, the same way it did with GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2.
NBA 2K27 came out September 4, 2026 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC, and WWE 2K27 and PGA Tour 2K27 are on Take-Two's schedule without dates. Further out, Ghost Story Games is making Judas, Ken Levine's first game since BioShock Infinite, for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. Take-Two still lists the next BioShock as in development at 2K, along with 31st Union's Project ETHOS. Zelnick has also said he's excited about the future of Mafia after The Old Country outperformed.
The real question for Take-Two is what happens after November 19. GTA V carried the company for 13 years, and GTA VI is expected to set a new baseline. Whether 2K can get BioShock and Judas out the door without Rockstar's money propping everything up is what will decide how the next decade of Take-Two looks.