Take-Two Interactive is one of the largest publishers in the video game industry. The American company is, among others, the owner of the Rockstar studio, which is responsible for the most profitable game in history, “Grand Theft Auto 5”, and is currently working on its continuation. In 2023, Take-Two employed 11,580 employees worldwide.
Now, however, the company intends to say goodbye to some of them. Take-Two has just announced a collective layoff program. 5 percent of the staff, i.e. 579 people, will lose their jobs. “eliminate several projects in the development phase and streamline the organizational structure”, and job cuts are to be part of this process.
Interestingly, when in February this year year, Strauss Zelnick, the head of Take-Two, presented information on the cost reduction plan and swore that the company had “no plans” to lay off employees. Even earlier, in November last year, the company claimed that it had appropriately scaled its business and expected to be on a “growth path”, which is expected to be influenced by the premiere of “GTA 6” scheduled for 2025.
Big studios are laying off employees. Crisis in the gaming industry?
Take-Two is not the only gaming giant that announced collective layoffs in 2024. EA, Eidos-Montreal, SEGA and Riot Games also said goodbye to some of the crew. The largest job cuts occurred at Microsoft. The giant from Redmond dismissed 2,000 people in its studios – Xbox, Microsoft Studios, Activions Blizard King and Bethesda (ZeniMax).
Statistics show that only in January this year. Over 6,000 people said goodbye to the video game industry this year, which is as many as in half of last year.
The crisis also affected Poland. At the beginning of the year, the Warsaw studio CI Games announced a plan of collective layoffs covering 10 percent of the staff. For now, the specter of layoffs has passed over those employed at the CD Projekt RED studio. However, it is worth recalling that in mid-2023, the creators of “Cyberpunk 2077” dismissed over a hundred employees.
Source: Gazeta
Mabel is a talented author and journalist with a passion for all things technology. As an experienced writer for the 247 News Agency, she has established a reputation for her in-depth reporting and expert analysis on the latest developments in the tech industry.
