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Kerbal Space Program 2 producer confirms mass layoffs, contradicting CEO’s remarksExecutive indecision
Executive indecision
Image credit:Private Division
Image credit:Private Division
“The team at Intercept Games will be laid off as of June 28th so a great group will be out and about looking for their new roles. As will I,” said senior design manager Quinn Duffy ina post on LinkedIn. Duffy has been working at the studio in its final months.
“I got to know the designers pretty well in my all-too-brief time there,” he said. “These are some fantastically smart and talented people and I’m happy to vouch for their qualities.”
To those affected the reality appears obvious. The studios are being closed. So why doesn’t the CEO admit as much? Jason Schreier of the Washington Post points out that Take-Twobehaved in a similar way with 2K Marin, a studio they shut down in 2013. Although that studio has not been operating for 11 years, executives have never admitted to closing the studio in plain language.
It’s hard to know what Zelnick (or his PR people) are thinking when they commit to inscrutable language that seems to defy reality. It is possible that, since the process of closure is ongoing, there are legal reasons (or tax reasons (or both)) behind the reluctance to state clear facts.
To close a limited company in the UK in the most simple (and cheapest) way is known as “striking off”, and costs as little as £10. However, one condition is that the company needs to have assets less than £25,000. Otherwise you need to go through a “liquidation” process, which can cost a lot more. Since it takes time to offload assets and get affairs in order, it’s possible Zelnick has been advised not to confirm any closures explicitly yet, even though notice has been served to staff. It is also possible that company names like Intercept or Roll7 are being treated as resources in themselves. In other words, the corporation may not want to close the studios in the legal sense, but instead leave them dormant on paper. Like that bit in Indiana Jones were the US government stacks the Ark of the Covenant away into a vast stockpile of looted perils.
But I don’t know. This is all thoughts-out-loud. I’m not an accountant or a corporate lawyer. Nor do I have any inside knowledge about Take Two’s practices when it comes to auto-cannibalising and absorbing the life force of its child companies. Nevertheless, we’ve reached out to them for comment too.
