Take-Two has begun laying off staff, with the corporate operations and publishing sectors at indie label Private Division (The Outer Worlds, OlliOlli World) reportedly subject to significant cuts. The news was broken by Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier, and later confirmed by Take-Two spokesperson Alan Lewis, who said the cuts were to ‘better align’ the company with long-term priorities.
‘We continue to make strategic investments in our talent and technology to deliver our long-term pipeline, and the impact of these changes on our U.S. development teams has been minimal,’ Lewis told Game Developer of the layoffs. ‘Take-Two has experienced exponential growth in recent years, and we are taking these necessary steps to position the company for another extended period of success.’
At this stage, the scope of the cuts is unknown – however, they may be expanded in future.
Take-Two announced a need to ‘drive efficiency’ in February 2023, following the release of its latest financial earnings report. While this report revealed company net revenue had risen 56% in the last financial year, growth was significantly short of forecasts. Take-Two aligned this result with the financial disappointments of Marvel’s Midnight Suns, New Tales from the Borderlands, and PGA Tour 2K23.
Read: Take-Two plans layoffs to reduce costs and ‘drive efficiency’
As a result of this performance, Take-Two announced layoffs would be necessary in future – although CEO Strauss Zelnick claimed they would not be sweeping.
‘We continue to support and build our development teams, and where we have overhead, we have to be very diligent about looking at the overhead,’ Zelnick told GamesIndustry.biz of these changes. ‘We don’t expect any kind of broad-based reduction in force. We are going department by department and trying to drive efficiency.’
Private Division appears to be the first subsidiary in the firing line, with layoffs now in the process of being handed down. We’ll likely hear of more cuts in future, as Take-Two continues to seek cost-cutting measures in its quest for long-term growth.
