GTA 6 publisher Take-Two Interactive has spoken out about the impact that the hacking scandal had on the team.
While it doesn’t believe that the almost a hundred leaked videos of early development footage will impact sales, it has had another effect.
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Speaking with IGN, CEO Strauss Zelnick revealed that he isn’t concerned with how the hack will affect the business.
However, he says that the leaks have had an “emotional” impact on the team, who had their work ripped apart despite being in the early stages of development.
He said “We take leaks very seriously indeed and they disappoint all of us, it’s really frustrating and upsetting to the team.
“However, as a business matter we’re not affected. But as a personal matter and an emotional matter, our teams are affected.”
Like many games companies, Take-Two fell short of expectations this year, and are looking to cut costs by $50million (£40million) this financial year.
Zelnick explained that the plan is not to introduce mass layoffs but conceded that some jobs could be lost.
He commented: “We don’t expect some kind of broad-based reduction in force or anything of the sort, but that said it’s not as though we guarantee lifetime employment sadly.
“So there will be certain instances where jobs will be lost, but I think that will be pretty modest.”
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This loss in jobs and profit is not necessarily in regards to the hack, but more a case of the industry-wide dip in sales.
Due to the global economic crisis, consumers are trending towards spending on well-established games rather than new releases.
These older games are often on sale for a lower price, and also almost guarantee that the player will have a positive experience.
While this benefited Take-Two with its legacy games such as GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2, it has led to lower-than-expected sales on newer releases.
This squeeze has been noticed across the industry. Ubisoft reported huge losses last year, and mass layoffs have been seen at Microsoft.
Written by Georgina Young on behalf of GLHF.
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