Take-Two CEO Says Forced Ads in Full-Price Games Would Be Unfair

Strauss Zelnick drew a hard line between free-to-play advertising and the premium game experience, telling The Game Business that forcing ads on players who already paid $70 or $80 for a title crosses a line he has no interest in crossing.

"It's difficult for me to believe that we would want to have interstitial advertising in a game that someone paid $70 or $80 for," the Take-Two Interactive CEO said. "It would seem unfair."

The remarks, reported by GameSpot on March 17, 2026, came in direct response to comments from industry analyst Matthew Ball, who had pointed to NBA 2K's enormous play volume as a potential goldmine for advertisers. Ball, quoted by PC Gamer, noted that "2K said last year that two and a half billion games of NBA 2K are played a year," arguing that inventory on that scale would attract major brands like Ford Mustang or Old Spice willing to pay "pretty material sums" for a targeted audience. Zelnick's response was blunt: "For free-to-play titles, yes. For titles for which you've paid $70 or $80? No."

He did carve out one specific exception, and NBA 2K players will recognize it immediately. "We have some limited advertising inside games like NBA 2K because it fits with the vernacular," Zelnick said. "You want to see advertising in a stadium, because you would if you were there in real life. But that's not a big economic contributor." The courtside boards and arena signage baked into NBA 2K have always been part of its broadcast realism; Zelnick's framing positions those placements as atmosphere, not revenue strategy.

The distinction matters because the ad format Zelnick was rejecting is something far more disruptive. Interstitial ads, the kind that interrupt gameplay mid-session, are increasingly being floated as a console and PC revenue stream as publishers look beyond traditional game sales. Microsoft, for its part, is reportedly planning a free tier of Xbox Cloud Gaming that would let users watch ads in exchange for playtime, according to TweakTown.

Zelnick also pushed back on a broader industry narrative during the same interview: that AI tools could democratize the creation of blockbuster hits. "These tools may help you create assets, but that won't help you create hits," he said. "Thousands of mobile games are launched every year, and there are only a handful of hits. Equally, you can create assets that might look like a big release, that might look like NBA 2K or EA Sports FC. But creating a hit of that magnitude is a completely different animal and does require human engagement and creativity."

On the business side, Zelnick acknowledged that Take-Two currently pulls 65% of its revenue from the United States, but projected that figure would fall to somewhere between 20% and 25% over the next ten years as the company expands its global footprint.

For the 2K community, the immediate takeaway is straightforward: the company that makes NBA 2K has its CEO on record opposing the kind of forced mid-game advertising that has made mobile gaming a frustrating experience for millions of players. Whether that position holds as revenue pressures mount across the industry is a separate question entirely.