Take-Two Interactive announced plans to lay off five percent of staff just weeks after saying there were “no plans” for job cuts.
The gaming industry has been ravaged by layoffs in 2024 and the trend has continued after the Grand Theft Auto 6 publisher axed jobs and canceled projects, which it says will save around $165 million a year.
Take-Two Interactive outlined its plans in an SEC filing on April 16 and the announcement hits particularly hard as it was just a few weeks ago that CEO Strauss Zelnick said there were “no current plans” for job cuts.
Zelnick’s comments were made to IGN ahead of Take-Two’s third-quarter earnings call, which followed news of Rockstar ordering GTA 6 devs to return to office in February.
Take-Two’s job cuts are given an even worse look by the fact that the plans to save around $165 million a year pale in comparison to the acquisition of Borderlands developer Gearbox Entertainment in a transaction valued at $460 million—though the deal is expended to close in the first quarter of the 2025 fiscal year.
No specific figures have been shared on the total number of employees losing their roles with Take-Two Interactive, though GamesIndustry.biz notes the latest annual report put the number of full-time employees at 11,580.
If those numbers are accurate, it would mean over 550 people are losing their jobs—continuing an abysmal period for game developers, with thousands of job losses across the industry since the start of 2024.
Those making job cuts this year include PlayStation in February, Microsoft axing 2,000 employees in January, and several rounds of layoffs at EA and Respawn.
The number of job losses in the gaming industry in 2024 is understood to be over 8,000 already, with it seeming inevitable that it will surpass the figure of around 10,000 layoffs in 2023.
Published: Apr 17, 2024 03:48 am