Take-Two, the owner of Rockstar and 2K Games, is implementing a $50 million cost-reduction program in the fourth quarter of its fiscal year 2023. The company spoke on this plan during the earnings results for its fiscal third quarter.
“In light of the current backdrop and Take-Two’s strong commitment to efficiency, the Company is implementing a cost reduction program expected to yield over $50 million of annual savings, which it will begin to realize in the fourth quarter of its Fiscal Year 2023,” Take-Two said in Q3 2023 earnings report. “The program includes personnel, processes, infrastructure, and other areas, and will primarily focus on corporate and publishing functions.”
In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said this program isn’t planning to have a large-scale reduction on the workforce, which would mean no mass layoffs. “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. “We don’t expect any kind of broad-based reduction in force. We are going department by department and trying to drive efficiency.”
IGN corroborated this reporting, writing that Zelnick said that layoffs are “not the plan,” and that even though some jobs may be lost, folks shouldn’t expect major layoffs across the company. “We don’t expect some kind of broad-based RIF [reduction in force] or anything of the sort, but that said it’s not as though we guarantee lifetime employment sadly,” Zelnick told IGN. “So there will be certain instances where jobs will be lost, but I think that will be pretty modest.”
During the earnings report, Take-Two also spoke to the commercial shortcoming of Marvel’s Midnight Suns, citing a non-ideal release window as a potential reason for the game’s sub-par sales. It’s a shame the game didn’t sell very well–it’s fantastic!
