Every year, players buy digital currency in the latest NBA 2K game. And then, every following year, they buy the next game in the series, and any VC (in-game digital currency) they earned or bought is left behind. This issue is at the heart of an ongoing 2023 lawsuit against publisher 2K, with the suit claiming this is theft. And in court documents that have been newly made public, we can read some company execs explain why they won’t let players carry over this currency while also reminding people they don’t actually own the currency at all.
As reported by GameFile, 2K and its parent company, Take-Two Interactive, are currently dealing with a lawsuit filed in California three years ago by a minor known as J.A., with the help of his mother and lawyer. The class action suit claims Take-Two is stealing from players every year it denies them the chance to roll over VC from one NBA 2K to the next. Take-Two, of course, denies this. In an unsealed deposition that happened in 2025, as covered in court docs seen by GameFile, NBA 2K vice president of production management Michael O’Dwyer explained why.
“There‘s a lot of reasons for that,” said the exec. “First and foremost, there is no technical solution in existence.”
Take-Two lawyers also pointed to the terms of service, which players agree to when buying and playing the game. In there—buried in thousands of words that J.A.’s lawyer, elsewhere in the docs, labeled as “overly harsh, unduly oppressive, and unfairly one-sided”—is the explanation that VC is considered a “virtual item.” And according to the game’s terms of service in 2024, “you agree that you have no ownership or other rights in or to any Virtual Items or your Account.”
O’Dwyer also shared another “very important primary reason” for why VC can’t be transferred.
“We want every new game that we release to be a completely fresh start where every user, regardless of whether they’ve been in a prior game or they’re entering our franchise and seeing this current game for the very first time, that they all come in with an exactly equal opportunity,” said the exec.
O’Dwyer further explained that to let players roll over purchased but unused VC, it would need to “separate what’s earned versus paid.” In NBA 2K, players can earn VC just by playing the game, though it is much faster to buy VC, which lets you upgrade your player and buy new cosmetic items. It has become a very big (and controversial) part of the game. And while it would technically be possible for the devs to split up your VC between owned and earned, Take-Two doesn’t want to. “That’s not something we philosophically want do.”
“We know it‘s a massive undertaking which would come at the direct cost of many other things we want to invest our dev, time, and resources in,” said O’Dwyer. “Not to mention we don’t even think the player benefit is there, so we don’t want to do it.” And when asked if 2K could develop a new system to split up VC, the exec replied, “We’ve never actually tried to make this change or been desired to make this change.” He also added that it would take a “complete redesign of a very complex game.”
So just to sum up a bit: According to publishers, you don’t own the games you buy digitally. And you don’t even own the currency you buy in those games. It’s not hard to understand why so many people are yelling at Sony over the death of physical games when this is the current state of digital game rights in 2026. As for this lawsuit, it continues to proceed.
