The meme is funny, the situation is scary.
According to reports of preparing for the announcement of the new Mafia (the announcement is expected at one of the major summer shows) came not so pleasant news — Take-Two (owners of Rockstar, 2K and Private Division) reduced staff by 5% and canceled several unannounced games at the same time. Interestingly, two months ago, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick (give $50 for the re-release of Red Dead Redemption) assured that No plans to lay off people.
In its recent annual report, Take-Two reported that it has 11,580 full-time employees, meaning that 579 specialists will lose their jobs. It was not disclosed which departments were cut.
Take-Two is the publisher of such well-known game series as GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Mafia, BioShock, XCOM, and Civilization. What are the unannounced Take-Two games This time they went under the knifeIt is also unknown.
Thanks to the stabilization measures described above, Take-Two expects to reduce costs by about $200 million. And this is a rather revealing situation that is best illustrated (to a large extent) by the modern game dev — a company that is very likely to earn $3-4 billion within 6 months after the release of the well-known game next year, «forced» to lay off employees to… increase their profits. As they say, the meme is funny, the situation is terrible.