Actual Former Rock Star Blows Up ‘GTA 6’ Offer to License a Song for $7,500, After ‘GTA 5’ Grossed $9 Billion

“Utterly unacceptable” is what Martyn Ware, the co-founder of the British new wave group Heaven 17, called Rockstar Games’s offer to include the band’s song in Grand Theft Auto 6. If you’re unaware, yes, GTA 6 is coming. It’ll supposedly be released in 2025, according to the first trailer, though there are credible rumors that it could be pushed to 2026.

Ware and his group Heaven 17 released a song titled “Temptation” in 1983. It went on to,h become the UK’s 34^th best-selling single that year. Rockstar Games was started by a group of UK game developers, so they plausibly grew up listening to “Temptation”—or heard it on the soundtrack to 1996’s Trainspotting. 

The game developer reportedly wanted to include “Temptation” on one of the Grand Theft Auto series’ beloved radio stations that players listen to in the car as they drive around town causing mayhem. GTA V featured 16 stations and 440 songs. But Ware said the offer of a one-time payment of $7,500 for each of the three songwriters, totaling $22,500, for the indefinite rights to the song, without future royalties, was an insult. Ware rejected the offer.

IT WAS $7500 – for a buyout of any future royalties from the game – forever…

To put this in context, Grand Theft Auto 6 grossed, wait for it…

$8.6 BILLION

Ah, but think of the exposure…

Go fuck yourself

— Martyn Ware 🦉 (@martynware) September 7, 2024

To be more specific, he told them, “Go fuck yourself.”

Ware’s issue stems from the fact that Grand Theft Auto 5 has reportedly generated somewhere in the neighborhood of $8.6 billion in gross revenue. It’s a fancy neighborhood. He says the offer is inappropriate given the enormous value of the franchise, especially given that Rockstar was asking for indefinite lifetime rights so the song could be played an incalculable number of times by several million players over its lifespan. 

For those claiming H17 should have accepted the extremely low offer for buyout for Temptation in GTA6 claiming ‘increased exposure’…

An extra 1 million streams generates each writer a pitiful $1k each

— Martyn Ware 🦉 (@martynware) September 8, 2024

Ware expressed disinterest in the idea of accepting the lowball offer to instead bank on the exposure such a large game would generate that could potentially, hypothetically, lead to financial gain down the line when and if players start streaming his band’s song after playing the game.

There are just too many What If’s for musical artists in that kind of deal, so many of them balk at these kinds of propositions, hoping instead to make some guaranteed money upfront rather than waiting for compensation down the line that may never arrive.