Take-Two Interactive is set to lay off Intercept Games employees next month.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, Intercept Games senior design manager Quinn Duffy broke the news on LinkedIn, as he is also one of the people to be laid off.
This is the full text of Duffy’s post:
“Well, here we go again.
The team at Intercept Games will be laid off as of June 28th so a great group will be out and about looking for their new roles. As will I.
I got to know the designers pretty well in my all-too-brief time there. These are some fantastically smart and talented people and I’m happy to vouch for their qualities. And I can say the same about the other disciplines – good folks across the board.
Kerbal Space Program 2 is a delightful game, deeply engrossing, and incredibly pretty even in its early-access state and I hope you have a chance to check it out.
For Science!”
In all this news, it does seem that we hadn’t noticed that Kerbal Space Program 2 was a recent release. In fact, it just got published on Steam Early Access last February 24, 2023. Duffy doesn’t say that the studio is shutting down, but as shameful as it is, the studio is getting a serious trimming down.
We reported on rumors that Take-Two Interactive was shutting down Intercept, as well as Roll7, the developers behind the OlliOlli games and the award-winning Rollerdome. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick went on the record that they ‘didn’t shutter those studios,’ but Take-Two didn’t share a clear picture of what happened.
With the benefit of hindsight, it does seem we can paint a better picture of the situation. The rumor that those studios were being closed came from a Jason Schreier report for Bloomberg. Jason claimed to have seen documents as evidence that the studios were being closed.
After this, other reporters found a WARN notice, which is a legal requirement in Seattle prior to layoffs. The WARN notice is posted 60 days in advance, but the way this notice was filed did not clearly indicate that Seattle based Intercept Games was closing.
So, it looks like what happened is Jason did get his hands on legitimate documents, but did not interpret the information correctly. In fact, it’s likely that Jason found the same WARN Notice other reporters found.
The WARN notice did indicate that layoffs were happening at Intercept Games, but it did not actually say the studio was being closed. Jason made an assumption based on the number of employees listed. Strauss Zelnick himself clarified that layoffs happened across different Take-Two offices. This is corroborated with news of layoffs across their label Private Division.
It would not make sense for Take-Two to shut the studio down completely, especially since the game is still in Early Access. Take-Two promised Kerbal Space Program 2 was still in active development. We don’t know the full details on how development will continue on this title for now, but Take-Two may eventually shed light on it to keep the player base around.
Of course, it’s sad when we have to report on layoffs, but this situation seems to have been incorrectly reported because the games media, this writer included, failed to interpret the available information accurately. We should make it clear we expect that Roll7 still exists, even if they may have layoffs coming in June or the coming months too.
We regret the error, and we hope the best for everyone who are scheduled to leave Take-Two Interactive in the coming weeks and months. Take-Two’s attempt to get around the topic doesn’t excuse these errors, and we will always work to correct ourselves as errors like this come to light.
