Charles Barkley has confirmed that he will, once again, not appear in the next "NBA 2K" video game.
Barkley and video game publisher 2K Sports have not been able to agree on a financial agreement over the past few years to make the Hall of Famer a fixture in the game as both an analyst and a playable athlete. The money, however, is not for him — it's for retired players.
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"Unless they give the retired players X amount of money, they cannot use my likeness," Barkley said on the Scoop B Radio Podcast. "And I think I’m not even going to think about that anymore. They’re gonna give some money to the retired players, or they’ll never be able to use my likeness, period... My job is to take care of the older players."
Barkley has been a notable missing piece of the game since "NBA 2K15," when the game added a pregame, halftime and postgame show reminiscent of TNT's "Inside the NBA." The in-game show currently features Ernie Johnson, Shaquille O'Neal and Kenny "The Jet" Smith.
Barkley has had other Luddite-like tendencies — actively avoiding social media sites like Instagram and Twitter for personal reasons — but his reasoning behind this has certainly been more philanthropic. It's also been a stance he's stood firm on for some time.
The former NBA MVP isn't the only famous player not featured in the game. Reggie Miller and Rasheed Wallace have also not been featured in any "NBA 2K" game since they retired.
"Some players don’t want to do it because they have no interest in the gaming space for variety of philosophical reasons," Ronnie Singh, the digital marketing director for 2K Sports, told For The Win in 2017. "We would honestly want everybody that we could have in the game to the best of our abilities."