Take-Two cuts jobs at Private Division
Publisher says impact on US dev teams is minimal, and it has started legal processes outside of US that could result in further layoffs
Take-Two is laying off some employees at its Private Division label and across other divisions of the company, Bloomberg's Jason Schreier reported today.
A company spokesperson confirmed the news for GamesIndustry.biz, saying, "We can confirm that there have been targeted reductions in our US teams, primarily in corporate operations and label publishing, which will better align our organization with our 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 US development teams has been minimal.
"Outside of the US, we have begun procedures in compliance with local law that we anticipate may result in similar reductions. 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.”
Take-Two signalled the possibility of layoffs last month when it missed its third quarter revenue and bookings forecasts and announced a cost reduction program aiming to eliminate more than $50 million of annual spending, focused on "personnel, processes, infrastructure, and other areas, particularly in our publishing and corporate functions."
"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," Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick told us at the time.
"We don't expect any kind of broad-based reduction in force. We are going department by department and trying to drive efficiency."