Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick has spoken for the first time about his surprise addition to the WWE 2K26 roster in June, saying it was his idea and the DLC did quite well actually. But don’t expect the high-powered CEO to appear in GTA 6.
Zelnick was quietly added as a playable character in WWE 2K26 during the game’s third season content update, complete with a full entrance with unique commentary alongside ‘My Way’ by Frank Sinatra, which is quite the licensed song to get for any video game.
The 69-year-old gaming executive weighs in at 165 lbs and holds an in-game rating of 77, which might be fair enough given Zelnick has been called “America’s Fittest CEO.” In 2018, aged 61, he was said to be working out 10-12 times a week. He founded his own private workout club known as The Program, and he’s written his own wellness book, Becoming Ageless: The Four Secrets To Looking and Feeling Younger Than Ever.
So, when I got the chance to interview Zelnick following Take-Two’s most recent financial report, amid questions about the decision not to sell GTA 6 on a disc and talk of how streaming might just save gaming, I squeezed in a question about how he became a playable character in the company’s WWE game.
Zelnick confirmed he asked for it to happen, so it was his idea, and he performed motion capture for it. “How it came about? I asked,” he said. “I wish I could say that there was huge popular demand internally and externally, but that would be a lie. I asked and then I went on the soundstage and I did motion capture and we all had fun with it. But no, this was a rare moment where I said, ‘I think this would be fun. Let’s do this.’ And everyone’s like, ‘Okay.’”
But why would Zelnick want to do this in the first place? “Because I love the title and I loved WWE, and I thought it would be funny for insiders and maybe fun for some consumers,” he explained. “And I think it got exactly the expected response. And by the way, a lot of people played it, as it turns out, it did very well. But the online response was sort of like, ‘Huh?’ Which I think I deserved.”
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The inevitable follow-up question was: if Zelnick is a playable character in WWE, does that mean we might see him in GTA 6 when it comes out this November?
“You will not,” Zelnick said, putting that one to bed immediately.
In a previous interview, I had asked Zelnick about Take-Two’s WWE video game franchise, which is successful but lags behind the enormous popularity of its NBA series. He told me WWE 2K could “double or triple” the size that it is now.
“I do think there’s ongoing opportunities to improve the quality of the game,” he said. “I do think that we can give consumers more of what they want. And I know our team at Visual Concepts always wants to do better. We’re never in the business of patting ourselves on the back. We believe that arrogance is the enemy of continued success. And I think that title could be double or triple the size that it is as long as we delight consumers, and as long as we give them something new and not expected that’s consistent with the brand that they love. That’s our job.”
Maybe Strauss Zelnick being a regular playable character will do the trick.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
