Tag Archives: redundancies

Take-Two has responded to reports this morning over lay-offs within the company, and turns out, it’s happening at the corporate level only.

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Update 2: Take-Two says redundancies are at the corporate level only. More through here.

Update 1: Just got this from a Take-Two rep: “No comment at this stage, I’m afraid.”

Original: According to MCV, Take-Two is to drop over 20 percent of its global workforce.

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A post over on fansite WipEoutZone has revealed that SCEE plans to make a cut in staff at Studio Liverpool with the WipEout HD team rumored to be on the list of redundancies.

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After news broke yesterday of Ziff Davies quitting the industry for good, and 1UP being bought out by UGO amid a round of redundancies, J Moses, CEO of the UGO Entertainment told MTV that he feels the criticism of UGOs treatment of 1UP and its staff is unfounded.

“We really have largely left it alone,” said Moses when questioned.

“We kept, we believe, the core editorial group that can continue to do great things. What we’re adding is 1up.com as an editorial site that will sit on top of the UGO publishing site. And we kept who we believe are the critical people who can make up a great site.”

Moses goes on to say that EGMs closure had “absolutely nothing to do with UGO.”

Full thing through the link.

In an interview with MCV, Activision Blizzard CFO Thomas Tippl said that, although the merger of Activision and Blizzard will lead to an “all-star team” of developers, overlaps will unfortunately result in redundancies.

“With every merger, there is overlap and redundancy, and so the same will be true here. Of course we’re going to go to our customers with one face. We don’t need two sales forces,” he explained.

“But in the short term we will exterminate some of our overlap through redundancy – but we will treat people respectfully,” he went on.

“We will try to put the best team together – the all-star team. We’ll update both companies’ skill and experience levels and become a formidable company.”

More through the link.

By Mike Bowden

According to this Gamasutra report, THQ has laid off staff at two of its wholly-owned developers, Phoenix, Arizona-based Rainbow Studios and Kirkland, Washington-based Sandblast Games.

The Rainbow staffers were let go in mid-April, with the bad news hitting Sandblast this week, apparently.

From the piece:

The Rainbow layoffs occurred in mid-April, comprising about 30 team members from an unannounced game. According to sources, the production on the project will continue with the reduced staff – and the staff were a minority of the developer’s multi-team setup.

Similarly, an unspecified number of layoffs at Sandblast were conducted this week – though it appears that the company will continue work on its current project, Destroy All Humans! Path of the Furon for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

SurferGirl posted this morning that the majority of the redundancies are to come from Sandblast, which is likely to close. Rainbow will continue to operate on a skeleton crew.

Oh dear. According to this, SCi has announced radical restructuring plans which are to include sizeable lay-offs and a move to Canada to take advantage of all those lovely tax breaks.

“The company plans to operate at a maximum head count of 800, a reduction of 25 percent, while the board has decided to cancel 14 projects currently under way as they will not generate an acceptable return on investment or are not of sufficient quality,” said that GI report.

The company plans to switch from a centrally controlled development and publishing model to a studio-led business focusing on its core products – Tomb Raider, Hitman, Championship Manager and Deus Ex.

“Our quality has slipped below acceptable standards and, through disappointing game development and working within an ineffective operating structure, we are failing to realise the commercial return our creative ability and our shareholders demand,” said the company. “Our infrastructure is too big and expensive for the scale of the business.”

Full thing through the link.