Take-Two Interactive
Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. is an American video game holding company based in New York City founded by Ryan Brant in September 1993.
The company owns three major publishing labels: Rockstar Games, Zynga and 2K, which operate internal game development studios. Take-Two created the Private Division label to support publishing from independent developers, though it sold the label in 2024 to private equity. The company also formed Ghost Story Games which was a former 2K studio under the name Irrational Games. The company acquired the developers Socialpoint, Playdots and Nordeus to establish itself in the mobile game market. The company also owns 50% of professional esports organization NBA 2K League through NBA Take-Two Media. Take-Two's combined portfolio includes franchises such as BioShock, Borderlands, Civilization, Grand Theft Auto, NBA 2K, WWE 2K, and Red Dead among others.
As of April 2025, it is one of the largest publicly traded game companies globally with an estimated market cap of.
History
1993–2000: Formation and initial growth
Take-Two Interactive was founded by Ryan Ashley Brant, the son of media executive and Interview co-owner Peter Brant. Ryan Brant had attended the Hotchkiss School and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in May 1992. He began his career in May 1991, working for his father as the chief operating officer of Stewart, Tabori & Chang, a publisher of illustrated books, until August 1993. As Brant wanted to forge his own path, he decided to create a video game publishing company. He stated "I wanted to get into a business where I could raise capital as a younger guy. In technology, people expect you to be a younger person." An initial in funding was raised from his family and private investors. Take-Two was incorporated under the Delaware General Corporation Law on September 30, 1993, with Brant as chief executive officer. The business was launched with assistance from John Antinori and Mark Seremet. Seremet sold his stake in the company in 1998. Early on, Take-Two had a location in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. By June 1994, the company had acquired and absorbed InterOptica, a software publisher owned by Wan Chai and headed by Catherine Winchester ; the latter became Take-Two's first president. Later that month, Take-Two struck a deal with GameTek that would see the publisher distribute five of Take-Two's games worldwide.Starting with Star Crusader in September 1994, Take-Two found its first major success with games that included full motion video with well-known live actors performing the parts, following the success that Mechadeus had with The Daedalus Encounter which featured Tia Carrere. Take-Two hired Dennis Hopper, among others, to star in parts for Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller, which sold over 300,000 copies over the following year and established profit for the company. This was followed by Ripper, of which of its budget was used to hire actors such as Christopher Walken, Karen Allen, and Burgess Meredith. The success of both these games, as well as earlier titles, led to a publishing agreement between Take-Two and Acclaim Entertainment to publish Take-Two's titles, as well as obtaining overseas distribution. Take-Two also secured a license with Sony Computer Entertainment to publish on the PlayStation line of consoles. In February 1995, GameTek acquired a stake in Take-Two, aligning the studio with its own Alternative Reality Technologies. By July 1995, Take-Two had established its head office in the Silicon Alley area of New York City. Take-Two expanded in its Latrobe location and, in September 1996, took over the second floor of its office building, which had been occupied by the Chestnut Ridge Chapter of the American Red Cross.
Around 1996, the company was making about, but Brant wanted to further expand the company, and made its first acquisition of Mission Studios and publishing its JetFighter III game in 1996. Brant decided to secure additional funds for acquisition by taking the company public. The company announced this intent in April 1997, looking to raise. The company had its initial public offering on April 15, 1997, being listed under the ticker symbol TTWO on the NASDAQ stock exchange. The opening price was, above the expected, and on its first day rose to. From the IPO, the company gained about along with on venture fund promissory notes. At this time, Peter Brant had been the largest shareholder in Take-Two at 25% owned through Bridgehampton Investors LP, which also had Ryan Brant as general partner. The additional funds allowed Take-Two to acquire GameTek's European operations, its internal Alternative Reality Technologies studio, and the rights to GameTek's Dark Colony, The Quivering, The Reap, Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune games. The company hired Kelly Sumner, a GameTek executive director, as part of this purchase. Additionally, the company acquired Inventory Management Systems, Creative Alliance Group, and Alliance Inventory Management, three video game distribution companies that helped to extend Take-Two's reach into the retail market.
In the same year, Take-Two stepped in as the publisher of Monkey Hero. Its developer, Blam!, had been struggling financially after the game's original publisher, BMG Interactive, was shut down by BMG Entertainment, its parent company. In March 1998, Take-Two acquired all assets of BMG Interactive for 1.85 million shares, worth about. In the previous year, the United Kingdom-based DMA Design and BMG Entertainment had just released Grand Theft Auto, and while it financially performed well but was not a critical success in Europe, it had sparked controversy over the use of violence in video games, with United States Senator Joe Lieberman speaking out strongly against it. Seeing the opportunity to capture attention on the game, Brant had initiated the acquisition of BMG as to acquire the Grand Theft Auto property, and at the same time, contacted BMG's Sam and Dan Houser, Terry Donovan, and Jamie King to found a new label within Take-Two, called Rockstar Games for which to develop more titles like it. Electronic Arts' 2008 CEO, John Riccitiello, stated that, with the establishing of Rockstar, Take-Two effectively invented the "label" corporate structure, which EA followed into in 2008. With the rights to Grand Theft Auto, Take-Two expanded its publication into North America, and the game became Take-Two's first financial success with over 1.5 million copies sold.
Take-Two also began taking on distribution capabilities, acquiring various distribution firms such as DirectSoft Australia for the Oceania market. Notably, in August 1998, Take-Two acquired Jack of All Games, an America game distributor, for about. Take-Two subsequently bundled many of its existing and future distribution outlets under the Jack of All Games brand.
In 1999, Take-Two acquired DMA Design, and invested into Gathering of Developers and Bungie. In September, the company also acquired Triad Distributors and Global Star Software, a video game distributor and publisher, respectively, both founded in 1993 by Craig McGauley and Damian Cristiani and operating out of the same offices in Concord, Ontario, with the same management team. Israeli developer Pixel Broadband Studios was acquired for in March 2000, before Take-Two sold it off to Gameplay.com in October that year, receiving in Gameplay.com shares in return.
2001–2006: Further acquisitions and regulatory investigations
In February 2001, Brant stepped down as CEO of Take-Two to serve as its chairman, being replaced in the former role by Sumner. Around this time, the company had 658 employees. With Rockstar, Take-Two invested into developments of sequels to Grand Theft Auto, including Grand Theft Auto 2, and Grand Theft Auto III along with sequels, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. By 2003, Take-Two had revenues exceeding. In 2002, the Take-Two name was dropped as a publishing label when the short-lived publishing label Gotham Games was introduced. In 2004, Take-Two paid to Infogrames for the rights to the Civilization series. The company had also planned to acquire Vivendi Universal Games for.In 2005, Take-Two began a host of acquisitions, spending more than buying game developers. One of its largest acquisitions was for the development studios Visual Concepts and Kush Games from Sega for about in January 2005. Both studios had been extensively behind several sports simulation games, branded through ESPN, and typically released updated versions each year, using a 2K brand to differentiate versions. In 2004, Take-Two had struck a deal with Sega to help publish these titles. Just prior to Take-Two's acquisition, Electronic Arts announced it had secured the exclusive rights to create video games based on the National Football League and a fifteen-year branding deal with ESPN, effectively killing Visual Concepts' own NFL title and devaluing their others games. This decision led Sega to abandon the sports-game market. Take-Two acquired these studios and unique branding, as well as negotiated for exclusive rights with Major League Baseball for video games. A day after announcing these acquisitions, Take-Two established their 2K publishing label to maintain the 2K brand, moving several planned games from their budget software label, Global Star, to 2K. Take-Two further realigned the other existing internal studios — Indie Built, Venom Games, PopTop Software and Frog City Software, and Take-Two Licensing — within this new structure.
After the formation of 2K, Take-Two completed other major acquisitions. Firaxis Games was acquired in November 2005 for around ; Take-Two had already supported the studio by using their acquisition of the Civilization license to support publishing of Civilization IV. Irrational Games was acquired around January 2006 for about, including both its Boston and its Canberra studio. At the time Irrational had already established a publishing deal with Take-Two for their upcoming BioShock game. With the deal, Irrational became part of the 2K label. It also acquired PAM Development from the Gaia Capital Group for, giving them access to the Top Spin series of tennis games.
However, during this period, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission began examining Take-Two's business records, based on complaints filed from 2001 that Take-Two's earnings did not seem to match figures of game sales reported by NPD Group. The SEC's formal complaint found that the company had purportedly sold products to distributors as a "parking transaction" for a quarter, as to artificially increase their revenues for investors, which it estimated was a fraud. A lawsuit was filed against Take-Two in December 2001, alleging that the company had lied to shareholders. Take-Two initially restated seven quarters of past financial results in February 2002, then five years in January 2004. Brant stepped down as chairman in March, being succeeded by Richard Roedel. After the SEC's issuance of the complaint in 2005, Take-Two agreed to pay a fine, along with Brant and other executives paying fines totaling around. Brant, who had remained with the company in the non-executive role of "Vice President of Production", ultimately resigned from the company in October 2006, following a four-month disability leave due to a bad back.
In 2007, a separate investigation by the SEC found further issues with Brant and two other executives of the company. In an industry-wide sweep against options backdating, the SEC had found Brant had received backdating options of over 2.1 million shares, though he had excised all options upon his 2006 resignation. Brant pleaded guilty to falsifying business records, but agreed to co-operate with the SEC and instead of receiving up to four years in prison, was fined and barred from holding any "control management positions" in a publicly traded company. Brant died of cardiac arrest in March 2019 at the age of 47.
Further troubling Take-Two during this period was criticism and legal actions taken against the Hot Coffee mod, a user-made modification to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas that unlocked a hidden graphic sex scene that was built into the game, with concerned politicians and consumers stating the scene belied the game's ESRB content rating. Actions taken against Take-Two included an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission for deceptive advertising, to which Take-Two and Rockstar settled in 2006 on fines for any future violations of content ratings. Take-Two completed a settlement related to class-action lawsuits filed against it in 2005 over the Hot Coffee mod, as well as to a class-action lawsuit brought by shareholders over the options backdating fraud, in September 2009.