Take-Two, the guardian firm for Rockstar, who will launch what is going to undoubtedly be one of many greatest video games ever to hit the trade in 2025 with Grand Theft Auto VI, will reportedly be shedding 5% of its employees and reducing a number of initiatives.
The report comes from Bloomberg, and says that this layoff motion is being taken “as a part of a cost-savings drive.” The employees numbers for Take-Two most not too long ago topped out at 11,000, so a 5% lower signifies that 550 folks shall be laid off.
It’s unknown when the layoffs will begin because the report solely says the layoffs are “deliberate,” although it’s doubtless they might occur someday earlier than the top of Take-Two’s present fiscal quarter, which means someday between now and June.
As soon as once more it’s saddening to see extra folks shall be dropping their jobs attributable to nothing greater than executives attempting to pinch pennies the place they’ll.
There’s additionally an added layer of egregiousness for Take-Two nonetheless, as a result of when you’ve gotten Grand Theft Auto beneath your belt, a franchise that has collectively bought near half a billion copies, most of these coming from one recreation, it’s troublesome for anybody to consider you’re struggling financially.
That is additionally the identical writer that simply final November claimed to be “in development mode,” with GTA VI now developing on the horizon.
The identical writer that charged gamers $50 for a remaster of Crimson Lifeless Redemption, and known as the worth “commercially correct,” as a strategy to excuse charging near modern-day new recreation costs for a recreation that’s over a decade outdated.
Admittedly a simple wrongdoer to level to for why these layoffs are occurring in any respect might be Take-Two’s current buy of Gearbox. When large publishers purchase different large publishers/studios, it’s comprehensible that some folks’s jobs may overlap in obligations.
This doesn’t excuse the layoffs by any means, Take-Two must be greater than able to find new roles for anybody in that state of affairs, however as a substitute factors to the fact that layoffs normally comply with shortly behind large mergers, with this overlapping getting used as an excuse by executives.
In the end, it simply regularly sucks to see. The video games trade is supposed to be the biggest leisure sector on the planet and on the forefront of know-how and leisure.
Shedding hundreds of staff to higher line the purse strings of executives and obtain short-term monetary targets nonetheless doesn’t ship that message.
Hopefully these builders impacted by the layoff are capable of land on their toes quickly.
Supply – [Bloomberg]