For those of you living under a rock, GTA IV came out April 29th touting many more than a dozen online play modes. For those of us with the (highly reviewed) PS3 version, the multiplayer modes have been a real sore spot, as a large portion of us have experienced periodic or persistent issues with the game. The problem seems to stem from faulty network code that even affects single player games while the network connection is active.
Today, Rockstar released the first patch for the game. A patch that according to early reports seems to have alleviated the issues. Honestly, that’s great. It’s what I’ve been wanting since I first experienced issues with the game-freezing. Not content to just give us a patch, Rockstar’s parent company Take-Two Interactive had to go and re-piss me off though…
Strauss Zelnick, Chairman for Take-Two Interactive, put on his fancy suit, to be interviewed on CNBC yesterday. That part’s all fine and dandy, he’s trying to build his company up to get more money from EA. What pissed me off was when the reporter asked him point blank,
“No issues with any glitches with Grand Theft?“, the guy had the nerve to say (and I quote): “No, No, No, uh, no, none whatsoever. I’d say the only issue is someone came up to me yesterday in a restaurant and said my thumbs are hurting from the weekend…”
WTF Zelnick?!?! What in the hell is the patch for that they’ve been hard at work creating for the past week if there are no glitches? Why are Digg.com, N4G.com, and virtually every gaming community online complaining about the PS3 (and to a lesser degree, the 360) freezing on them?
Sheesh. What a tool. The Rockstar guys deserve credit for the work they’ve done for the game, but it’s guys like this… suits out for the money at all costs… blatantly telling lies/untruths, or exercising their “plausible deniability” angle by being removed from the day to day work. It’s these type of guys that really turn me off to their companies and products. I hope the deal to sell Take-Two for a fortune falls through and this guy’s payday never comes.
Maybe Rockstar can pull a Bungie and break off on their own and get out from under Take-Two’s umbrella. I’d be surprised if this guy has even played the damned game… poser. Greedy poser. Greedy, suit-wearing, smarmy TV-talkin’ poser of a poser.
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7 responses so far ↓
1 balaamsafe // May 7, 2008 at 3:11 pm
for some reason while reading this i thought of the kid in matilda (at least i think it’s matilda) who eats all the cake and then tries to tell his teacher he didn’t eat it while wiping chocolate from around his mouth
2 Tweep // May 7, 2008 at 3:22 pm
@ Rothbart, I totally agree but we aren’t the intended audience of his comments. He isn’t talking to us the gamers (for whom he’s blatantly false) he is communicating to his shareholders in a bid to keep his company.
That’s why he’s being outright false and arrogant.
3 Riki // May 7, 2008 at 3:54 pm
I wouldn’t expect him to say “Yeah, we have some major issues in the game.” Even if he qualified it with assurances that the problems were being fixed, that’s still going to put him on the defensive when he knows he can get away with saying the game is perfect.
Suppose he had said “Well, there were some network issues on the ps3 version, but we released a patch which fixed the issue” that doesn’t seem any better, as he would be ignoring other issues, and only addressing one which is already fixed.
Certainly I would respect a man who allowed his brief interview to be tainted by honesty, but in a world ruled by sound bites, honesty and integrity are severe liabilities.
4 Sean "Rothbart" Workman // May 7, 2008 at 4:03 pm
@Tweep: I agree we’re not his target, but it’s _still_ either ignorance or an outright lie… neither one is what I’d look for from the leader of a company I might consider buying or investing in…
@Riki: “Nothing major, no… and any small issues are being addressed as we speak” or something like that would’ve a hell of a lot more truthful. It only takes a simple Google search to make his statement appear blatantly false… which brings the rest of what he’s saying into question.
5 Riki // May 7, 2008 at 4:41 pm
@ Rothbart
If you search specifically for glitches, yes, but a quick search for grand theft auto gave me lot’s of information about how much money they are making, and it took quite a bit of digging to get to glitches. His target audience probably wouldn’t search for glitches if he didn’t acknowledge them. They would probably be far more interested in the money.
I’m not saying it’s right, just that it makes sense that he wouldn’t talk glitches.
Perhaps a better way to handle it would have been to stress what a massive undertaking the game was (I’d sugest a comparison to the apollo space program) and then in that context say that it is amazing how well they did making the game, and how dedicated those guys are to making it perfect, and that even now they are constantly looking for any potential issues so they can fix them. That way he can turn the negative bit on glitches into a positive about the quality of the product and R*’s commitment to excellence.
6 Dan // May 8, 2008 at 2:06 am
My copy of GTA4 is broken
7 NoneOfYourBusiness // May 8, 2008 at 11:51 am
Well it is supposedly fix’d and since the majority of the gaming community are ingnorant fools who just download patches because they think they are getting free stuff, he really isn’t too far off the corporate mark.
He answers to the bank not to gamers. and if the majority dont know, they will keep on buying and Rockstar will be good and the gamers who do care get a free patch, so that too will be good.
Its political.
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