The owners of Grand Theft Auto didn't have to do anything to become the largest publicly traded video game publisher that does nothing but make video games. On August 4, a consortium led by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund closed a roughly $55 billion deal to take Electronic Arts private in what has become the largest leveraged buyout in history. EA stock stops trading, and the company behind Madden, Battlefield, The Sims and EA Sports FC now answers to private owners instead of the stock market.
As a knock-on effect, Take-Two Interactive, owners of Rockstar Games, and by extension, Grand Theft Auto VI, now sits alone atop the video game industry.
The irony here is that, back in 2008, right before Grand Theft Auto IV launched, EA tried to buy Take-Two. The offer was around $2 billion. Take-Two's board, led by Strauss Zelnick, said no, arguing the bid badly undervalued the company, its franchises, its creative talent and its loyal fanbase. They called the timing what it was, an attempt to grab the company cheap just before a massive release was about to send its value up and Zelnick was right.
Now, the company EA tried to swallow has outlasted EA's run as a publicly company entirely.
How the Tables Turned on EA and Take-Two
Then (2008) | Now (2026) |
|---|---|
EA tried to buy Take-Two for about $2 billion | EA sold itself for about $55 billion |
Take-Two rejected it as undervaluing the company | Take-Two is the largest public pure-play publisher left |
The bid was timed right before GTA 4 | Take-Two is about to launch GTA 6 |
EA was the aggressor | EA is now privately owned by a Saudi-led group |
Comparing EA and Take-Two in 2008 and now, in 2026.
A pure-play game publisher is one whose whole business is making and selling games, as opposed to a company like Sony or Microsoft that also sells the consoles, or a giant conglomerate where games are one arm of many. Take-Two, through Rockstar, 2K and Zynga, does basically one thing and it does it so well that it's setting records based on its releases alone. Sure, it doesn't make GTA 6 better, sell more copies, or change anything you will experience as a player. It mostly matters to investors and to the industry's balance of power. So if you were hoping this somehow speeds up the game or changes it, it does not. This is a business milestone.
Still, it does feed a specific ambition Zelnick has long had for Take-Two. He has repeatedly said his goal is for Take-Two to become the number one entertainment company on the planet, calling it the company's guiding star. Whether you find that inspiring or just corporate bluster, it's now one step closer to achieving that. Throw GTA 6 in and it could very well become what Zelnick has always dreamed it could become.
GTA 6 is expected to be the biggest entertainment launch in history, and it is the engine that could actually push Take-Two toward the kind of numbers that back up Zelnick's talk.
When one game carries this much of a company's strategy, the pressure on it is enormous, and any stumble, another delay, a rough launch, a failure to hit the astronomical expectations, hurts far more than it would for a company spreading its bets. Take-Two is not spreading its bets. It is putting an extraordinary amount of weight on Rockstar's shoulders and Rockstar, for all its annoying silence, is poised to exceed even the highest of expectations.
With Zelnick set to talk to investors later this week, expect a spin of this news to pop up one way or another.
Fingers crossed, it will come with a third GTA 6 trailer as well.