Take-Two Will Reportedly Layoff 5% Of Staff And Cut Multiple Projects

Take-Two, the parent company for Rockstar, who will release what will undoubtedly be one of the biggest games ever to hit the industry in 2025 with Grand Theft Auto VI, will reportedly be laying off 5% of its staff and cutting multiple projects.

The report comes from Bloomberg, and says that this layoff action is being taken “as part of a cost-savings drive.” The staff numbers for Take-Two most recently topped out at 11,000, so a 5% cut means that 550 people will be laid off.

It’s unknown when the layoffs will start as the report only says the layoffs are “planned,” though it’s likely they could happen sometime before the end of Take-Two’s current fiscal quarter, meaning sometime between now and June.

Once again it’s saddening to see more people will be losing their jobs due to nothing more than executives trying to pinch pennies where they can.

There’s also an added layer of egregiousness for Take-Two however, because when you have Grand Theft Auto under your belt, a franchise that has collectively sold close to half a billion copies, most of those coming from one game, it’s difficult for anyone to believe you’re struggling financially.

This is also the same publisher that just last November claimed to be “in growth mode,” with GTA VI now coming up on the horizon.

The same publisher that charged players $50 for a remaster of Red Dead Redemption, and called the price “commercially accurate,” as a way to excuse charging close to modern-day new game prices for a game that’s over a decade old.

Admittedly an easy culprit to point to for why these layoffs are happening at all could be Take-Two’s recent purchase of Gearbox. When big publishers acquire other big publishers/studios, it’s understandable that some people’s jobs could overlap in responsibilities.

This doesn’t excuse the layoffs by any means, Take-Two should be more than capable of finding new roles for anyone in that situation, but instead points to the reality that layoffs usually follow quickly behind big mergers, with this overlapping being used as an excuse by executives.

Ultimately, it just continually sucks to see. The games industry is meant to be the largest entertainment sector in the world and on the forefront of technology and entertainment.

Laying off thousands of employees to better line the purse strings of executives and achieve short-term financial goals however doesn’t send that message.

Hopefully those developers impacted by the layoff are able to land on their feet soon.

Source – [Bloomberg]