Take-Two Interactive has announced they will be laying off 5 % of their workforce, and cancelling several games in development.
As reported by Bloomberg, they cited a cost-savings drive as the reason for layoffs in a recent filing. They also revealed in the filing that they expect to lose $ 200 million because of these layoffs, $ 35 million from the cost of firing employees, and $ 140 million from projects they are also cancelling.
Bloomberg received no comment from a company spokesman outside of the filing, but we can partially trace where this stems from. Take-Two had actually been discreetly engaging with an acquisition spree in the past few years, and arguably saw those investments bear fruit in the height of the pandemic lockdown/quarantine period. But today, like other game companies, everything has swung the other way, and Take-Two is closing projects and laying off people as a result.
The company mentioned that they would have a “significant cost reduction program” in an earnings call this February. In March, somewhat under the radar, they already fired a smaller number of employees. Jason Schreier revealed layoffs in their indie publishing label, Private Division, and Axios reported on layoffs in Firaxis games.
Three weeks ago, Take-Two finalized their purchase of Gearbox from Embracer Group, and that takes us to today. Take-Two’s lineup of publishers includes 2K, Rockstar Games, Private Division, two mobile publishers in Zynga and T2 Mobile Games, and Dynamixyz, a facial motion capture company.
Under 2K’s purview is not only Gearbox, with Borderlands and their other games, but the Bioshock franchise, Civilization and XCOM under Firaxis Games, the Mafia series, and their sports games, including NBA 2K and WWE 2K, primarily made by Visual Concepts. Unfortunately, we should now be prepared for upcoming news that employees from these divisions will be laid off.
There are other studios as well that just aren’t as visible, but certainly were making games and are now also at risk of getting layoffs. For example, 2K Silicon Valley quietly got renamed to 31st Union, and is working on an unannounced title. 2K also acquired the rights to Kerbal Space Program, and later founded a new studio to work on it called Intercept Games, with many of the original developers under it.
Take-Two’s jump into joining the industry wave of layoffs is just a little bit earlier than this, but the result is unfortunately the same. GameRanx wishes the best for the employees of Take-Two, and hope those who do get laid off will find placement back into the video game industry.
