Take Two Interactive (Rockstar, 2K, Private Division) canceling games, ending projects and laying off 5% of its workforce

[Pulstar]

8 minutes ago, K^2 said:

70 people are getting let go. Restructuring doesn't require WARN notice. That's everybody at the studio. There's nobody left to fold in.

I just checked myself and you are right, this type of restructuring where there is an option for transfer wouldn't qualify for WARN and wouldn't trigger it.

Per page 4's bottom half:

https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ETA/Layoff/pdfs/_EmployerWARN2003.pdf

Edited May 1 by Pulstar

[Skorj]

We know for sure that the IG offices in Seattle are closed.  We know for sure that Nate's LinkedIn now shows him working for PD, not IG.  We can conclude with some confidence that IG, the studio, is history.

We don't know what happened to all the devs there, but any merging of them into other parts of PD would likely involve relocation (the WARN act distinguishes between layoffs and site closures, this is the latter).

We know some sort of KSP2 work is still ongoing.  While it's possible that KSP2 feature development will continue at another studio, that's unlikely given current industry trends.  More likely, the game will move to a support group focusing on bugfixes.

Edited May 1 by Skorj

[Great Liao]

1 minute ago, Skorj said:

We know for sure that the IG offices in Seattle are closed.  We know for sure that Nate's LinkedIn now shows him working for PD, not IG.  We can conclude with some confidence that IG, the studio, is history.

We don't know what happened to all the devs there, but any merging of them into other parts of PD would likely involve relocation (the WARN act distinguishes between layoffs and site closures, this is the latter).

We know some sort of KSP2 is still ongoing.  While it's possible that KSP2 feature development will continue at another studio, that's unlikely given current industry trends.  More likely, the game will move to a support group focusing on bugfixes.

Two questions unanswered:

• What does this mean for KSP1, updates, delisting (I really would hope not), purgatory, and the KSP IP as a whole?
• What do we, the community, do now, buy the first game as an IP, move to competitors, are we going to be divided, or unite on buying the IP/competitor?

[MARL_Mk1]

6 minutes ago, Skorj said:

We know for sure that the IG offices in Seattle are closed.  We know for sure that Nate's LinkedIn now shows him working for PD, not IG.  We can conclude with some confidence that IG, the studio, is history.

We don't know what happened to all the devs there, but any merging of them into other parts of PD would likely involve relocation (the WARN act distinguishes between layoffs and site closures, this is the latter).

We know some sort of KSP2 work is still ongoing.  While it's possible that KSP2 feature development will continue at another studio, that's unlikely given current industry trends.  More likely, the game will move to a support group focusing on bugfixes.

Funnily enough, the support team focusing on bugfixes would require to be established as a new studio focused on KSP2 just to fix current build's issues 

[Skorj]

1 minute ago, MARL_Mk1 said:

Funnily enough, the support team focusing on bugfixes would require to be established as a new studio focused on KSP2 just to fix current build's issues 

While I agree the KSP2 codebase really is that bad, there are some amazing support teams out there.  I've known guys who support vast libraries of legaicy code with just a small team, and are very fast at fixing bugs.  There's a knack to supporting a large codebase without really understanding it.

[Lisias]

53 minutes ago, Great Liao said:

Two questions unanswered:

• What does this mean for KSP1, updates, delisting (I really would hope not), purgatory, and the KSP IP as a whole?
• What do we, the community, do now, buy the first game as an IP, move to competitors, are we going to be divided, or unite on buying the IP/competitor?

1. Not a chance for both.
   1. There's a huge opportunity to residual incoming on the Franchise, delisting the game would be a huge management screw up.
      1. For starters, you would incentive piracy, what added to the incredibly modding capabilities of the game will lead to some less then desirable outcomes, that given the notoriety of the IP will fatally lead to bad P/R and further damages to the IP
   2. But there's no incoming enough to sustain a development team for maintaining (and fixing) it. Chances are by trying to do such a stunt, the new releases would only inject yet more nasty bugs -  what was happening already when they pulled the plug.
2. Unlikely at this time. Not only there're still some residual incoming to be exploited, as the IP itself at worst still have good value to be used as a bargain chip  on a merge or company/subsidiary sale.
   1. And frankly, by the time the IP would be affordable enough to be bought by the Community, chances are that the Community itself would not be big enough to withhold the endeavour, and whoever would be the one that had bought it will need to find "creative" ways to gather money - as licensing the IP to pachinkos...
      1. True Story. Check what they did with Metal Gear.
   2. On a blind guess, two years ago the Community was big enough - but so was the IP's face value, what means that things didn't changed too much about this subject.

 

1 hour ago, Vl3d said:

Keep calm and carry on.

Spoiler

 

 

 

Edited May 1 by Lisias
Better phrasing.

[Skorj]

I don't expect we'll see anything more of the Kerbal IP, but that doesn't mean someone can't make a great rocket game.  Much as I like the Kerbals, it was the physics sim that was the real appeal for me.  Having expressive characters in the world the rockets launch from is key, IMO, but they could be something other than Kerbals.

[MARL_Mk1]

16 minutes ago, Skorj said:

I don't expect we'll see anything more of the Kerbal IP, but that doesn't mean someone can't make a great rocket game.  Much as I like the Kerbals, it was the physics sim that was the real appeal for me.  Having expressive characters in the world the rockets launch from is key, IMO, but they could be something other than Kerbals.

Rocketwerkz (Dean Hall's studio, creator of Icarus, Stationeers...) was one of the final bidders for KSP2. According to what he said on the Reddit's megathread, they are still developing said game (not about Kerbals obviously) (with a propietary, in-dev engine) and is asking layoffs from IG to contact him directly. There's still hope for other realistic spaceflight games to flourish for now. When asked, he said we should hear about the project in about +-1.5 years.

 

Edited May 2 by MARL_Mk1

[Lisias]

14 minutes ago, MARL_Mk1 said:

Rocketwerkz (Dean Hall's studio, creator of Icarus, Stationeers...) was one of the final bidders for KSP2. According to what he said on the Reddit's megathread, they are still developing said game (not about Kerbals obviously) (with a propietary, in-dev engine) and is asking layoffs from IG to contact him directly. There's still hope for other realistic spaceflight games to flourish for now. When asked, he said we should hear about the project in about +-1.5 years.
 

Interesting! Wikipedia says he is friend with people from Bungie! What a remarkable coincidence!!!

 

 

 

Edited May 2 by Lisias
better information

[MechBFP]

11 minutes ago, MARL_Mk1 said:

Rocketwerkz (Dean Hall's studio, creator of Icarus, Stationeers...) was one of the final bidders for KSP2. According to what he said on the Reddit's megathread, they are still developing said game (not about Kerbals obviously) (with a propietary, in-dev engine) and is asking layoffs from IG to contact him directly. There's still hope for other realistic spaceflight games to flourish for now. When asked, he said we should hear about the project in about +-1.5 years.

 

Hey I didn't know this. Thanks for the heads up.

[PDCWolf]

12 minutes ago, MARL_Mk1 said:

Rocketwerkz (Dean Hall's studio, creator of Icarus, Stationeers...) was one of the final bidders for KSP2. According to what he said on the Reddit's megathread, they are still developing said game (not about Kerbals obviously) (with a propietary, in-dev engine) and is asking layoffs from IG to contact him directly. There's still hope for other realistic spaceflight games to flourish for now. When asked, he said we should hear about the project in about +-1.5 years.

 

And that'd make it not one, not two, but three proper successors that are not the official successor.

[Lisias]

Just now, PDCWolf said:

And that'd make it not one, not two, but three proper successors that are not the official successor.

At this time, I think we are facing a corporate coupe d'etat.

[Great Liao]

We could have gotten KSP 1.18 by this time if KSP2 wasn't a thing

- there were plans canceled for KSP2 around 2017-18, exactly when the idea began development

- these plans would have been part of KSP if not for KSP2.

It's all corporate.

6 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

And that'd make it not one, not two, but three proper successors that are not the official successor.

Well, that game looks promising, and 1.5 years isn't long. KSP may be a dead game, but this is an era. A spell of corporate greediness cannot kill the community. It will move on, to bigger and greater things. Like this new (indie?) game.

Ad Astra, Per Aspera. Through hardships, to the stars. The way HarvesteR intended when he made this game as a pet project 15? years ago.

[Ryaja]

11 minutes ago, Great Liao said:

A spell of corporate greediness cannot kill the community.

It could also be government policy in Washington making a dev team there unprofitable forcing a move.

Edited May 2 by Ryaja

[AtomicTech]

39 minutes ago, MARL_Mk1 said:

Rocketwerkz (Dean Hall's studio, creator of Icarus, Stationeers...) was one of the final bidders for KSP2. According to what he said on the Reddit's megathread, they are still developing said game (not about Kerbals obviously) (with a propietary, in-dev engine) and is asking layoffs from IG to contact him directly. There's still hope for other realistic spaceflight games to flourish for now. When asked, he said we should hear about the project in about +-1.5 years.

 

Interesting! I look forward to their release!

[PDCWolf]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-01/take-two-interactive-shuts-down-two-game-studios

Bloomberg confirmed hours ago that the closed studios are Intercept Games and Roll7 in case anyone missed it.

Intercept Games is dead, long live Intercept Games. Sad that management seems to have survived the transition again whilst sinking another ship after Star Theory.

Edited May 2 by PDCWolf

[Flush Foot]

2 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-01/take-two-interactive-shuts-down-two-game-studios

Bloomberg confirmed hours ago that the closed studios are Intercept Games and Roll7 in case anyone missed it.

Intercept Games is dead, long live Intercept Games. Sad that management seems to have survived the transition again whilst sinking another ship after Star Theory.

What Bloomberg actually said matches what we’ve known for ~24 hours:

 

according to a notice filed with the Washington State Employment Security Department Monday. The notice revealed that Take-Two plans to close an office in Seattle and cut 70 jobs, or roughly the number of people who worked for Intercept Games.

It does not provide any new details / confirmations that I can see…

[PDCWolf]

1 minute ago, Flush Foot said:

What Bloomberg actually said matches what we’ve known for ~24 hours:

 

according to a notice filed with the Washington State Employment Security Department Monday. The notice revealed that Take-Two plans to close an office in Seattle and cut 70 jobs, or roughly the number of people who worked for Intercept Games.

It does not provide any new details / confirmations that I can see…

It's the first source to not say "reportedly", and to actually be sourced from documentation they allegedly saw themselves.

Ignore, they actually link to the WARN.

"Journalism".

Edited May 2 by PDCWolf

[Flush Foot]

1 minute ago, PDCWolf said:

It's the first source to not say "reportedly", and to actually be sourced from documentation they allegedly saw themselves.

I’m not sure I spotted that distinction, but another one just struck me…

- London closure: closing the studio and offering severance packages

- Seattle closure: closing the office and cutting 70 jobs (roughly the number of people working on KSP 2)

… no mention of severance?

[Scarecrow71]

4 minutes ago, Flush Foot said:

I’m not sure I spotted that distinction, but another one just struck me…

- London closure: closing the studio and offering severance packages

- Seattle closure: closing the office and cutting 70 jobs (roughly the number of people working on KSP 2)

… no mention of severance?

Just because there is no mention doesn't mean it didn't happen.  Companies here in the states aren't required (AFAIK) to disclose whether or not severance was given.  The company I work for just laid a bunch of people off, and they didn't announce severance packages.  But I worked with several people who got let go, and they all indicated they got one.  My wife got one a year ago when she was downsized.

So it is possible they got a package but the org didn't mention it.

[AtomicTech]

8 minutes ago, Flush Foot said:

I’m not sure I spotted that distinction, but another one just struck me…

- London closure: closing the studio and offering severance packages

- Seattle closure: closing the office and cutting 70 jobs (roughly the number of people working on KSP 2)

… no mention of severance?

The ShadowZone theory was that T2 is just restructuring and moving the people from IG under PD.

Probably a lot of folks are going to stick around

[Devblaze]

So what. KSP2 is done? If take 2 didnt own rockstar they'd be so over.

[Great Liao]

10 minutes ago, AtomicTech said:

The ShadowZone theory was that T2 is just restructuring and moving the people from IG under PD.

Probably a lot of folks are going to stick around

Unfortunately lol. I swear to god Nate Simpson is going to end up the CEO of take two with the amount of times he's scammed people and got away with it.

[Jaypeg]

12 minutes ago, Great Liao said:

Unfortunately lol. I swear to god Nate Simpson is going to end up the CEO of take two with the amount of times he's scammed people and got away with it.

not how it works
creative direction aint the one in charge in that kinda way.
That would be upper management.

[Icegrx]

15 minutes ago, Great Liao said:

Unfortunately lol. I swear to god Nate Simpson is going to end up the CEO of take two with the amount of times he's scammed people and got away with it.

You’re pointing the finger at the wrong person. Point higher.