Take-Two CEO on Intercept, Roll7: 'We Didn't Shutter Those Studios'

ign.com:

Earlier this month, Take-Two announced a cost reduction plan that included project cancellations, the layoffs of 5% of its workforce, and other spending cuts. Amid this announcement came reports based on internal documentation that seemed to confirm Take-Two was closing OlliOlli World developer Roll7 and Kerbal Space Program 2 developer Intercept Games.

But when I asked Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick in a call today why these closures happened, he told me, "We didn't shutter those studios":

The reports, which came both from a WARN Act notice pointed out by Game Developer and internal documentation seen by Bloomberg, seemed pretty definitive, so this was a surprising response. [Update: Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier has since shared a snippet of the document on Twitter/X as well.] I followed up by asking Zelnick if he was denying the reports, at which point a PR representative for the company stepped in with the following:

I tried one more time, asking if the studios existed or not. PR reiterated that "We have not provided any additional color beyond what I just said."

If you're wondering what to make of all this, you're in good company. The WARN Act notice for Intercept Games in Seattle specified a "closure" as the reason for the layoffs of 70 people, which is roughly the entire total of all the employees there. It does seem possible Take-Two has somehow folded both of these studios into Private Division, given that the label will be taking up maintenance of Kerbal Space Program 2 going forward. I asked Zelnick if we should take these reports as a sign that Private Division itself is in some kind of trouble:

In a follow-up email, Take-Two PR clarified that the "entire organization" contributed to cost-saving efforts, and that Private Division was still planning on supporting games such as Moon Studio's No Rest for the Wicked, and upcoming games Tales of the Shire and an unrevealed Gamefreak project the publisher announced last year.

On our last few calls, Zelnick had