‘Grand Theft Auto’ Publisher Take-Two Announces Brutal Cost Reduction Plan, Cuts Over 500 Employees And Cancels “Several Projects In Development”
Spencer Baculi
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In a particularly brutal entry into the ongoing wave of Western video game industry-related layoffs, Grand Theft Auto and Borderlands publisher Take-Two has announced that, in seeking to balance their budgets, they have decided to not only slash its workforce numbers, but also cancel several unannounced projects.
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Rather than issuing a public statement on the matter, the publisher – whose portfolio of offerings also include the NBA 2K, TopSpin 2K, WWE 2K, Borderlands, and Red Dead Redemption series (as well as, in a personal mention, the surprisingly fun Marvel’s Midnight Suns title) – instead stealth revealed their upcoming cost reduction measures via an official filing made with the United States Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) on April 16th.
Therein, Take-Two declared that, per a collective approval from their Board of Directors, they would be undertaking a wide-sweeping “cost reduction program” to the tune of roughly $160 million to $200 million USD.
These efforts, explained the publisher, will see the company “rationalizing its pipeline and eliminating several projects in development and streamlining its organizational structure, which will eliminate headcount and reduce future hiring needs”.
“[Take-Two] estimates that it will incur approximately $160 million to $200 million in total charges in connection with the program,” they detailed. “The company expects $40 million to $60 million of the total charges to result in future cash expenditures. The total charge consists of approximately $120 million to $140 million related to title cancellations, approximately $25 million to $35 million associated with employee severance and employee-related costs, and approximately $15 million to $25 million related to office space reductions.”
Further, Take-Two then disclosed that, in service of their ‘organizational streamlining’, they would be working to “reduce the Company’s workforce by approximately 5%’ by the end of the year.
In their annual fiscal report for 2023, the company reported that, as of March 31st of that year, their workforce consisted of “11,580 full-time employees”. Thus, it is currently as assumed that this ‘5% cut’ will see roughly 579 members left without a job in the coming months.
As noted above, Take-Two is but the latest Western video game entity who in recent months have found themselves reckoning with the industry’s ongoing economic downturn.
From The Last of Us II studio Naughty Dog, to video game live-streaming platform Twitch, League of Legends and Valorant developer Riot Games, to instant messaging and voice chat platform Discord, to the titular company behind the Unity game engine, it seems more and more entities are finding that their current standard operating procedures, whether through their own mismanagement or players finally wising up to their poor business practices, are no longer sustainable.
And in compounding Take-Two’s fiscal pain, these lay offs mark the second time in a little over a year that the company has had to make reductions to their team.
In March 2023, the company announced that, in moving to “better align our organization with our long-time priorities”, they had cut an undisclosed number of employees from their Private Division label.
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