Every fall, NBA 2K asks you to buy Virtual Currency again. Every spring, the previous game's servers go dark and whatever you did not spend goes with them. A class action filed in California in 2023 called that theft. On Monday, September 21, Kotaku walked through the unsealed deposition of Michael O'Dwyer, 2K's vice president of production management for NBA 2K, and the company's explanation for why your VC cannot follow you from 2K25 to 2K26 comes down to this: "First and foremost, there is no technical solution in existence." Then, a few answers later: "We've never actually tried to make this change."
Both things cannot be the reason. Either it is impossible or you have not tried.
The case
The plaintiff is J.A., a minor, suing through his mother, in federal court in California. Stephen Totilo's Game File reported on September 18 that the deposition was taken in 2025 and unsealed last month. The complaint's core is simple: 2K shuts down an NBA 2K edition's servers roughly two and a half years after release, and any VC still in the wallet, including VC bought with real money, is gone, with no refund and no transfer.
Take-Two's position from the start, per the February 2024 motion to dismiss that Game File and PC Gamer both quoted, is that VC "is not Plaintiff's property. Instead, in-game VC are fictions created by game publishers, subject to the publishers' terms of service." The terms say you "have no ownership or other rights in or to any Virtual Items or your Account." You knew that when you clicked Accept. Legally, that may be enough. It should not be.
What O'Dwyer actually said
Kotaku's reading of the transcript pulls three threads. One, the technical claim: no system exists to move VC across editions. Two, the design claim: 2K "philosophically" does not want to separate earned VC from purchased VC, which is the distinction a transfer system would need. Three, the effort claim: a transfer would require a "complete redesign of a very complex game," and 2K has never attempted it or wanted to. Game File adds the cleaner version of the philosophy: 2K wants every new game to be "a completely fresh start where every user" comes in with "an exactly equal opportunity."
That is a nice sentence about fairness. It is also a description of a business model in which the reset is the product. Equal opportunity means everyone starts at 60 overall and everyone buys the same 200,000 VC to fix it.
What else fell out of the filing
Game File notes the unsealed documents show Take-Two tracks player behavior at a granular level: play time, modes, session length and spending, per player, per day. That is not a scandal on its own; every live-service game does it. But it undercuts the "we couldn't possibly" line. A company that knows how much VC you bought on a Tuesday can figure out how much VC you had on a Thursday.
Who this hits
NBA 2K is the most Black-coded video game franchise on earth. The Park, the Rec, the 2K League, the "VC" jokes in every rap song since 2K16: the culture built that game's economy, and the culture is who gets reset every September. A kid in Chicago who bought 450,000 VC in 2K25 to make his build usable has the same asset value in 2K26 as a kid who never spent a dollar: zero. The fresh-start philosophy is regressive by design. It falls hardest on the players who spent the most.
The take
Take-Two is not lying when it says VC is a fiction. That is the confession. The company sells a thing it says is not real, prices it in dollars, and deletes it on a schedule. Under oath, the executive in charge said the fix was both impossible and never attempted. If the court accepts that, the lesson for every Black gamer whose paycheck goes into MyCareer is the oldest one in this business: if you cannot take it with you, you never owned it.
## Sources - Lawsuit Forces 2K To Explain Why NBA 2K Players Can't Transfer Digital Currency — Kotaku, September 21, 2026 - Facing theft lawsuit, 2K exec argues against letting gamers transfer their virtual currency — Game File, September 18, 2026 - Take Two denies NBA 2K microtransaction theft claim, says virtual currency is a "fiction" — Game File, February 7, 2024 (background) - Take-Two Interactive says in-game currencies are 'fictions' that players can't actually own — PC Gamer, February 8, 2024 (background)