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Take-Two Interactive did something strange today that seems to confirm a rumor from yesterday.
Yesterday’s Rumor
Yesterday, Tez2 revealed that the publisher registered several domains to their nameservers. These domains seem to be references and/or parodies of real-life websites and apps.
For example, what-up.app looks like a parody of Whatsapp. Subsequently, rydeme.app could be a parody for Uber. And buckme.app appears to be a parody of either Venmo or Cashapp.
We speculated that Rockstar is using these names for apps and websites that will appear in Grand Theft Auto 6. We can see Lucia and Jason using these apps in the course of the game, or to parody them in the narrative campaign.
They could also turn up in Grand Theft Auto Online, and there’s a lot of potential there. Rockstar could run ARG games using these domains. They could also be turned into real apps you can use in the game.
The Big Update
Tez2 shared this update today:
Take-Two/Rockstar responded pretty quick.
All the domains listed within the post are no longer tied to their name servers anymore.
#GTAVI
He elaborated further:
The domains were tied to Take-Two via name servers, but they’ve updated them to obscure ownership, making it look like a large corporation owns them without revealing who.
Still, the swift change fuels speculation and creates a Streisand effect that points back to Take-Two.
What Does Streisand Have To Do With Grand Theft Auto Now?
Wikipedia defines the Streisand effect as:
…an unintended consequence of attempts to hide, remove, or censor information, where the effort instead increases public awareness of the information.
It got its name from no less than the Queen of the Divas, Barbra Streisand.
Streisand sued photographer Kenneth Adelman and the website Pictopia.com for violation of privacy. She was not happy with an aerial photograph that gave a clear view of Streisand’s mansion.
However, it turned out the photo was taken as part of the California Coastal Records Project. Streisand’s concerns as a homeowner were superseded by public interest.
The effect kicks in after Streisand lost the case. Because the lawsuit hit the news, the photo became famous and would soon be downloaded and viewed thousands of times.
What Does This All Mean?
It would have been hard for Take-Two to deny that they own these domains. That information was datamined and Tez2 is a credible source.
But as they say, when there’s smoke, there’s fire. If Take-Two didn’t do anything more with these domains, we could have forgotten about them in a week.
But this now signals that Take-Two has big plans with these domains. It is possible that they are planning something as ambitious as turning these into real apps. But perhaps they’ll be companion apps that work with Grand Theft Auto 6 and Grand Theft Auto Online.
