Take-Two Interactive, the well-known publisher behind game series such as Grand Theft Auto, will lay off five percent of its entire workforce. In addition, projects worth 140 million US dollars are to be discontinued. Does the austerity policy also have an impact on GTA 6?
Update from May 2, 2024: According to a report by industry insider Jason Schreier (Bloomberg), Take-Two Interactive is closing the two studios Roll7 (OlliOlli World, Rollerdrome) and Intercept Games (Kerbal Space Program).
The two companies belonged to the Private Division division, which will continue to exist and publish games like Tales of the Shire: A The Lord of the Rings Game – at least that should make colleague Benedict enormously happy.
What exactly is happening at Take-Two? On Tuesday, April 16, 2024, those responsible at the US publisher announced massive cost-cutting measures. The aim is to “streamline the pipeline” and thus save costs.
Specifically, this means:
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Why is this step surprising? There were layoffs at Take-Two Interactive in March 2023. A specific number of affected positions was not mentioned at the time (via PC Gamer).
In addition, Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Take-Two, stated last month that although they wanted to make further savings in the coming weeks, there were no plans for layoffs (via IGN).
And then Take-Two recently announced that it wanted to take over Gearbox Entertainment by the end of June for $460 million. The takeover is to be financed through the sale of new Take-Two shares (via press release).
What about GTA 6?
Although the publisher did not announce which projects would be discontinued in detail, we can assume that GTA 6 will not be affected by the cost-cutting measures – after all, this is the most important release in the coming years.
Take-Two expects a massive increase in sales once the open-world blockbuster is released – the launch is planned for 2025. This will also be necessary because, according to several sources, development and marketing costs are likely to be between one and two billion US dollars.
In the last quarter, Take-Two had net sales of $1.2 billion. That is 20 percent more than in the previous year. For the 2023 financial results, CEO Strauss Zelnick received total compensation of $40 million. Some of the bonuses were tied to players investing as much money as possible in microtransactions.
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