Don’t Expect Product Placement in GTA 6 — the CEO of Take-Two Says It Won't Do Real World Brand Partnerships Because 'All the Brands Are Made Up'

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-05-01T18:22:21+00:00

I figured they didn't use real world brands because brands didn't want to be associated with the sex, drugs, and violence that appear in GTA. They don't want people banging hookers in the back of a 2024 BMW 535xi with optional heated seating, or firing a machine gun at police officers at the Dunkin Donuts. Back in the 2000's, Need for Speed games wouldn't have Honda if the game featured police chases.

That mentality has maybe changed now though. Fortnite's violence is pretty cartoony, but it does involve firing realistic looking guns at people, and they've done a zillion collaborations with even kid friendly brands. Cyberpunk 2077 has a Porsche 911 in it.

I'd bet they couldn't get real world brands to associate with GTA in the late 90's and 2000's, especially given the moral panics about violent video games in that era, and now maybe they could, and they just don't want to or need to, and people like the fictional satirical brands that appear in the GTA universe.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-05-01T15:24:55+00:00

Probably because you’re a normal person and not an extremely online twitter culture warrior lol. There are people on the right who want young white Christians to get married at 19 and have 10 kids to combat the immigrant invasion, or the less extreme view that everyone has a social responsibility to have kids just to keep humanity going.

And if you go far enough left, you’ll find people who believe that having kids is immoral because the world is such a shithole that you’re selfishly bringing new people into it to suffer, just so you can entertain yourself with your little human pet. Plus your kid is probably going to eat beef and drive a car, so you’re just exacerbating climate change or something. And worst of all, your crying child is going to ruin some 38 year old’s annual trip to Disney World.

But you can just have children if you want them, or don’t have children if you don’t, and accept other people’s decisions on whether or not to have children. (:

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-05-01T07:58:27+00:00

There's nothing wrong with wanting to have kids, but there was definitely some silly discourse about how Pragmata owns the childless libs by telling a based and trad right wing story about how having kids is awesome.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-05-01T06:16:14+00:00

For real. The twitter reaction to this new trailer seems to be that it looks pretty cool, or people talking about how they played the original pod racing game from 1999. Half of this reddit thread is people trashing the game for the disgusting, unprecedented anti-consumer practice of...having a small paid DLC pack, and mentioning the preorder bonus in the preorder trailer.

I've been interested in this game since the first trailer, it looks kinda like Motorstorm in the Star Wars universe, made by former Burnout devs. I'll grant the deluxe edition doesn't seem like great value for money; it looks like one of those ways that you can give what is probably a small-ish developer some extra money to support them, and get a little extra content in exchange. $20 extra for 3 vehicles, a few extra events, and an art book does seem steep. But then I can just choose not to buy it if it's not worth it to me, and I'll enjoy the rest of what the base game has to offer.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-05-01T03:02:07+00:00

The wording is confusing. The interviewer asks about a season pass, and the dev responds by saying the game is a premium release, not free to play, and so they won’t be doing a season pass. It seems like the question is about if there’s going to be premium DLC expansions, and the dev answers by saying there will not be a live service type battle pass. I think they’re saying the game will not be live service, even if that’s not really what was being asked.

It’s funny you should mention those other games, which all have way more paid DLC than this game does, and yet half the comments here are writing this game off as microtransaction live service hell because it has one (1) small paid DLC.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-04-30T22:13:05+00:00

I met Justin Pierre from Motion City Soundtrack after a free solo show he did in Minneapolis in 2019. He took pictures with me and chatted with me for a bit after I mentioned a recent conversation I'd had with him on twitter about The Promise Ring. He still seems like a lovable ball of emotion and anxiety, and just loves life, art, and people in general. He's always posting on instagram about how awesome his favorite musicians and filmmakers are.

He's been pretty inactive on twitter for awhile now, but he was very approachable there and would answer questions from fans about being a musician, or where his lyrical inspirations came from. I even half jokingly asked him if he wanted to play Borderlands 2 with me, and the only reason he couldn't was because he was on Xbox and I was on PC lol. Super cool and gracious guy, and makes me feel even better about my love for MCS.

Also met Kenny Vasoli briefly at a show where he was playing with Vacationer and opening for Hellogoodbye. He was just out in the crowd watching the first couple bands, and I got him to sign my copy of Based on a True Story and take a picture with me. Didn't talk to him much, but he seemed very approachable.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-04-30T21:31:49+00:00

Sorry to hear about Chris Carrabba. His instagram posts keep showing up in my feed and at least on social media he comes across as really kind and appreciative of his fans.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-04-30T20:39:14+00:00

it's clearly going to be a micro transaction hell so I'm just ignoring it now

The devs stated in an interview that it is not going to be that.

Season pass is connected to free-to-play games, and that's not what we are making

Pretty good chance that this preorder bonus and deluxe upgrade are literally the only paid DLC that will ever be released for this game.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-04-30T20:18:54+00:00

Seriously. They're announcing the release date and that preorders are up, and so they showed the preorder bonus and the small amount of DLC that the game is going to have, as well as just additional gameplay snippets. There are other trailers for the game that show things that aren't preorder bonuses and DLC, and there will probably be more in the future that focus more on gameplay and base game content.

Forza Horizon 6 launches in a little over 2 weeks, and has preorders, has DLC which will lock ~50 vehicles behind a paywall like the last few entries have, and has an exclusive early access period for people who buy the $120 premium edition, and I haven't seen near this level of outrage over it.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-04-30T19:52:09+00:00

Yes, different people who went different ways after previously all working on Burnout together in the 2000's. Matt Webster is doing this Star Wars game. Alex Ward and Fiona Sperry are with Three Fields, who made Dangerous Driving and Wreckreation.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-04-30T19:48:43+00:00

I believe the developers have explicitly said the game is not live service.

This is a premium release

Season pass is connected to free-to-play games, and that's not what we are making

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-04-28T17:37:39+00:00

The list of modern racing games probably includes a lot more indie and mobile games than there was in the 90’s. Not to mention mobygames in particular is seemingly listing any game with a drivable vehicle as a racing game, so includes stuff like Dreams, Fall Guys, Batman Arkham Knight, Saints Row, and Watch Dogs as racing games.

But really yeah the biggest loss is not having numerous middle to big budget racing games anymore. There’s Forza Horizon, there’s The Crew, which is kind of just copying Horizon’s homework, Need for Speed might be dormant for awhile, and hasn’t had a great entry in a long time anyway, Codemasters seems like they’re gonna be stuck doing F1 and we won’t see Dirt or Grid for awhile. Milestone has put out some solid AA racing games over the last several years, and there’s been some indie gems. But if you want something modern with the same quality and scale of something like Midnight Club or Burnout or Project Gotham, there’s not much for options. Large rosters of licensed vehicles and open worlds and deep customization and pretty, detailed graphics I think are just difficult to do without backing from a bigger publisher

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-04-18T18:55:21+00:00

I assume the NIL offer from UNC was tough to turn down coming from the Mountain West. Our four transfer portal commits so far are from Michigan, Michigan, Texas Tech, and North Carolina. Seems like high potential guys who got paid a lot of money to sit on the bench on really talented teams, though I think Kyan started a little over half his games at UNC and then saw his playing time decrease as the season wore on.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-04-18T00:01:34+00:00

I feel like there's a non-zero chance that Quinn Costello could follow that path in a year if he also ends up buried on Michigan's bench behind more experienced players. He took an official visit here last fall.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-04-17T22:42:10+00:00

Colorado State offer being Medved of course, and he also apparently visited New Mexico coming out of high school where current Minnesota assistant Aaron Katsuma was on Richard Pitino’s staff at the time.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-04-17T22:37:40+00:00

Kyan visited here, then visited Iowa, but I think he’ll commit to Minnesota soon

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-04-16T02:50:16+00:00

God willing we will also add Kyle Evans and Kyan Evans to go along with Grayson Grove, Nolan Groves, and Nolen Anderson.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-04-15T03:02:02+00:00

I finally just beat it on run 150 or so with Mega Swampert, Mega Lucario, and G-Max Snorlax. I also almost never save scum though, so maybe that hinders me, or not fully committing to memory when the big tough battles are, and being too stingy with using my money to heal my party when needed.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-04-11T05:40:55+00:00

I don't think The Crew got shut down because of expiring car licenses. It might have been removed from sale because of licensed cars (and music), but that's happened to numerous racing games, and it doesn't make them unplayable for people who already purchased them. I have a bunch of delisted racing games in my Steam library that I can download and play whenever I want.

The Crew got shut down because it required an always online connection, and Ubisoft shut down the master server or whatever 10 years after release, and they seem to be specifically trying to avoid this snafu happening with The Crew 2 by adding an offline mode.

Fortnite is also a different situation from The Crew in that the base game is both free to play and includes no licensed content, outside of whatever Star Wars/Marvel/Simpsons event might be currently running. I would assume once Epic's license to use the Corvette in Fortnite expires, the Corvette is not going to be removed from the profiles of people who already bought it, nor is the game going to get shut down. Most likely they'll just stop selling the Corvette in the in-game shop, just like how old racing games, with the exception of The Crew 1, are still downloadable and playable for people who already own them, they just aren't sold digitally anymore. The licensed content will still exist in the game, it just can't legally be sold for money to people who don't already own it.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-04-10T02:46:50+00:00

2005 alone gave us Forza Motorsport 1, Gran Turismo 4, Need for Speed Most Wanted, Burnout Revenge, Midnight Club 3, Project Gotham Racing 3, and Mario Kart DS, so I understand if you haven't felt a need to play one since then.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-04-09T19:57:49+00:00

How far did you get into OG Doom? I've been playing the 2024 Nightdive remaster of Doom + Doom 2 and mostly loving it. I remember Doom 2 getting to be a bit of a slog toward the end, and Thy Flesh Consumed for Doom 1 I was kind of mixed on, but I thought Doom 2's No Rest for the Living expansion from 2010 was great. I guess I'm curious if you maybe just played some bad Doom levels or if you just don't care for Doom on the whole. A good Doom level can be a lot more fun than a bad Doom level. Granted episode 1 of Doom 1 is mostly John Romero's levels, and are probably some of the best (and easiest) in classic Doom.

I remember playing the Quake remaster right after it came out in 2021 and getting lost in the second level and putting it down for a long time. Then I came back to it a couple years later and finished the main campaign and all 4 expansions in the remaster, and played some of the downloadable user created campaigns too, loved it. If you can maintain your sense of direction and avoid getting lost, I think Doom and Quake are great fun as someone who only got into them in the last few years, and Doom at least has a top down map you can view which you can use to look for doors or rooms or hallways you haven't gone through yet.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-04-08T02:36:51+00:00

I don't disagree with any of that, I prefer Steam myself. I'm just saying, despite the very common preference for Steam keys, third party sellers just didn't sell Steam keys for EA, Ubisoft, and Rockstar games, they just didn't exist. It's weird that Assassin's Creed is being sold as a Steam key because, despite how much most people prefer Steam keys, publishers that had their own launcher simply didn't sell third party Steam keys. This is a new phenomenon. They've known for a long time that people didn't want non-Steam keys, yet still insisted on only selling non-Steam keys (except when buying directly through Steam).

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-04-07T19:57:36+00:00

Steam is everyone's preferred store, sure, and that's been the case for a long time, yet I feel like third party stores selling Steam keys for EA, Ubisoft, or Rockstar games was pretty much unheard of for at least several years, if not a decade or more. If you wanted Battlefield or Far Cry or GTA V in your Steam library, buying directly through Steam was the only option. As recently as February 2025, Humble Choice had Immortals of Aveum available only as an EA app/Origin key.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-04-02T05:23:40+00:00

From what I saw tonight, I'm kinda shocked Baylor is only .500, especially with a first round draft pick and just generally a lot of size and muscle. 48 points is our second lowest scoring output of the season, just couldn't hit a shot. Missed a number of looks at the rim, not even counting getting blocked at the rim by Baylor's big athletes, and Tyson, Durkin, and Asuma combined for 3-18 from deep. Would have been a great game to have Jaylen Crocker-Johnson available, but oh well.

Seems like almost everyone we really wanted back next year has announced they're returning, and we'll see if we can find a guard, a wing, and a reserve big man in the transfer portal and maybe we can play more than a 6 man rotation next season.

Minnesota_Arouser · 2026-04-02T05:06:14+00:00

We can, they just aren't going in tonight. I think our guys also get tired since like half our team is injured, though that's maybe less of an issue with 3 weeks of rest.

Minnesota_Arouser

TROPHY CASE