Strauss Zelnick, the chief executive of Take-Two Interactive, has said he expects Grand Theft Auto VI to be pirated, and does not regard that as grounds for alarm.
Asked about it during a sit-down at WSJ Tech, Zelnick began with the general case. "Piracy is a fact of life," he said.
Take-Two owns Rockstar Games, the studio behind the series. Grand Theft Auto VI arrives later this month on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.
Zelnick's answer drew on a long career across media. "I've been in every entertainment business there is, and when I was in the movie business we figured 10-20% at any given time," he said.
He then turned to music. "In the record business, because I was in the record business from 1994 to 2000 by the mid 2000s I would argue that 80% of the market was pirated, now that's way back down again," he said.
His case for calm about games is practical rather than legal. Modern releases are enormous, awkward to get running and often dependent on servers, which he suggested mitigates the problem without anybody having to do very much.
He was careful not to dismiss it. "It's not been a non-issue," he said, adding: "And in the event that it turns into an issue we address it the same way every other business does, which is with legal work, and then with technical work, and we'll have to do both."
The figures deserve a closer look, because of where they come from. Film piracy: 10 to 20 per cent. Recorded music: 80 per cent by the mid-2000s, and well down since. Both rates are dated by the same instrument, which is Mr Zelnick's curriculum vitae.
This newspaper regards the dataset as unusually complete. He has been in every entertainment business there is, which gives the study total coverage of its population and removes the need for any sampling at all.
It is also admirably longitudinal. The music figure is given for 1994 to 2000, when he was in the industry, and again for the mid-2000s, when he was not. Few long-run series are divided so cleanly.
Our analysts note the obvious weakness, which is the sample size. The sample size is one executive. Set against this, the one executive has been everywhere, which in most research designs is counted as a strength.
The forward-looking reading is therefore straightforward. Games are the industry he is in now, and games are the industry in which the problem is described as mitigating itself.
The Department of Unnecessary Research has asked for the one remaining figure. If the rate in each business is best observed in the years after he leaves it, the number that matters for Grand Theft Auto VI is not a piracy rate at all.
It is his retirement date.