Take-Two CEO claims it didn’t close Private Division studios Roll7 and Intercept Games

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has claimed that the publisher didn’t shut down Private Division studios Roll7 and Intercept Games, despite reports suggesting it planned to.

Last month, the publisher said it planned to lay off 5% of its workforce, or around 600 people, as part of cost-cutting measures that would also result in the cancellation of unnamed game projects.

This was followed by a Bloomberg report which claimed it had seen documentation revealing that two of the casualties of this restructuring were Roll7, the London-based developer behind OlliOlli and Rollerdrome, and Seattle-based Intercept Games, which developed Kerbal Space Program 2.

However, in a new interview with IGN, Zelnick appeared to suggest that neither studio had been closed, but didn’t clarify their actual status.

“We didn’t shutter those studios, to be clear,” Zelnick claimed. “And we are always looking at our release schedule across all of our studios to make sure that it makes sense.

“So we are being very judicious because we are in the middle of a cost reduction program that we’ve already concluded and are now fully rolling out. We’ve announced that we’re saving $165 million in existing and future costs, but we haven’t shuttered anything.”

Hey everyone, let’s play a game called What’s The Truth?

On the left, comments from Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick to IGN today.

On the right, part of a note sent to Roll7 employees that was obtained by Bloomberg earlier this month, shared now with the source’s permission. pic.twitter.com/raRV9Q4u4G

— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) May 16, 2024

When Zelnick was asked if he was denying the reports, a Take-Two PR reportedly stepped in and said: “What we’ve said is, in the 8-K filing that we put out, we talked about the cost reduction plan is approximately 5% reduction in headcount worldwide, but we did not give a label-by-label breakdown of what that looks like.”

Asked again to clarify whether the studios still existed, IGN’s reporter was told by the PR: “We have not provided any additional color beyond what I just said.”

Take-Two acquired Roll7 in November 2021. At the the time, Private Division said it would “empower” the studio to continue creating its signature “flow state gaming” experiences.