{"id":532849,"date":"2024-04-17T08:00:17","date_gmt":"2024-04-17T06:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=532849"},"modified":"2024-04-17T08:49:03","modified_gmt":"2024-04-17T06:49:03","slug":"gta-publisher-firing-over-500-staff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/gaming\/532849-gta-publisher-firing-over-500-staff.html","title":{"rendered":"GTA publisher firing over 500 staff"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Take-Two Interactive Software Inc., the company behind the\u00a0<em>Grand Theft Auto<\/em>\u00a0video games, plans to fire 5% its workforce and drop several projects as part of a cost-savings drive.<\/p>\n<p>The company sees expenses of up to $200 million as part of the downsizing effort, including as much as $140 million from cancelled projects and $35 million in employee-related costs, according to a filing Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>Take-Two is the latest big gaming company to\u00a0suffer\u00a0mass layoffs this year, including Unity Software Inc., Riot Games and Microsoft Corp.\u2019s games division.<\/p>\n<p>A contraction in the industry has led executives to take a\u00a0risk-averse strategy\u00a0when it comes to developing new games, which can take years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars.<\/p>\n<p>Take-Two employed 11,580 full-time workers at the end of its last fiscal year, according to filings. 5% of that complement works out to 579 people.<\/p>\n<p><em>Grand Theft Auto VI,\u00a0<\/em>due out in 2025, is expected to be one of the highest-grossing media products of all time.<\/p>\n<p>A company spokesperson declined to comment beyond the filing. On a February earnings call, Take-Two said it was working on a \u201csignificant cost reduction program.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ign.com\/articles\/take-two-ceo-says-they-have-no-current-plans-for-layoffs-amid-cost-reduction-program\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a recent interview with IGN<\/a><\/strong>, Chief Executive Officer Strauss Zelnick said there were \u201cno current plans\u201d for layoffs.<\/p>\n<p>In March, the company\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/news.bloomberglaw.com\/mergers-and-acquisitions\/embracer-cuts-debt-with-460-million-gearbox-sale-to-take-two\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">agreed<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0to acquire Gearbox Entertainment from Embracer Group AB for $460 million.<\/p>\n<p>In 2022, Take-Two purchased mobile game company Zynga for about $12 billion \u2014 a bet that industry\u00a0analysts say\u00a0hasn\u2019t paid off.<\/p>\n<p>The mobile games industry suffered a downturn shortly after the deal went through.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Take-Two is the latest big gaming company to\u00a0suffer\u00a0mass layoffs this year, following Unity Software, Riot Games, and Microsoft&#8217;s games division.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":532859,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[24654,32886,12083,26784,22253,35065,65201],"class_list":["post-532849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gaming","tag-game-developers","tag-grand-theft-auto-gta","tag-job-cuts","tag-rockstar-games","tag-take-two-interactive","tag-tech-jobs","tag-video-game-design"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532849"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=532849"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":532851,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532849\/revisions\/532851"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/532859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}