If you spend money uselessly in GTA Online, the boss gets a big bonus for it

Strauss Zelnick, the CEO of Take-Two, has signed a new contract. This runs until 2029 and contains a passage according to which he gets bonuses if players spend a lot of money in microtransactions. Take-Two sells games like GTA Online or Borderlands.

What’s in the contract? As the Axio’s website reports, one of the objectives in the contract is related to RCS (Recurring Consumer Expenditure). This goal must be met and exceeded in order to receive the bonus.

RCS content includes earnings earned via addons, in-game microtransactions, or virtual currencies. NFTs should also be included in the future.

And the bonuses for the bosses are not bad. For Zelnick it will probably be a matter of several million:

• Strauss Zelnick and President Karl Slatoff reportedly received over $31 million in stock bonuses last year (via sec.gov).
• According to Axios, had they missed their goal with RCS, they would have gotten $3.9 million less.

In concrete terms, this means that if you spend money in GTA Online, the boss at the top of the publisher will benefit directly from it.

Incidentally, it was Zellnick who officially announced GTA 6 at the beginning of the year.

Contracts with bonuses for achievements or microtransactions are not uncommon

Is the contract extraordinary? Rather not. Bonuses that are linked to certain successes can be found in many industries – including gaming. Zelnick is said to have previously had bonuses for microtransactions in the contract.

However, the new contract should now put a greater focus on it. That shouldn’t come as a surprise given the current figures:

• From April to December 2021, Take-Two raised over $1.65 billion through microtransactions.
• During the same period, they made just $890 million from game sales.
• The driving forces behind the microtransactions are GTA Online, Borderlands and NBA 2K.

Does this affect players? Basically not at first. However, it is noticeable that microtransactions are becoming increasingly important.

As boss and staff bonuses become more tied to them, interest in creating new content or new ways to get players to spend usually increases.

Former GTA 5 Boss Leslie Benzies is currently working on a new game aside from Rockstar and Take-Two:

Former GTA boss working on new MMO – Should be “real Ready Player One”.