The word of the shutdown was brought about by a notice of adjustment and retraining of layoffs workers (via game developers) at Take-Two Interactive Software in Seattle. While Intercept Games is not mentioned by name in the WARN article, Seattle is where Intercept was founded in 2020 as part of Take—Two's private division label to take over the development of Kerbal. The warning says that 70 employees have been put out of work.
WARN notice described the behavior as "closed" and led to speculation that Intercept Games was not just being cut, but being completely eliminated. It seems that the Intercept website is still trying to link to them, but several jobs at Intercept that were posted on Take-Two's career page (via Wayback Machine) on May 1 have also been removed, and the closure is expected to come into effect on May 6-28.
The Bloomberg report confirmed the speculation in effect, citing internal documents saying that the intercept game will actually be closed. roll7, which was acquired by Take-Two in 2021 and became part of the private division label, has also been closed. The latest releases of Roll7 are the side-scrolling skater OlliOlli World and the action shooter Rollerdrome, both of which were praised in 2022.
The apparent shutdown of the intercept has led to questions about the future of Kerbal Space Program 2, after multiple delays — it was originally supposed to be out in early 2020 — that set foot on Steam's Early Access in 2023/2.
The initial response to the game was not great: Bugs and performance issues were a big problem, but so was the fact that it launched without features included in the original Kerbal Space program, which went into early access more than a decade ago and hit a full release in 2015. This gave us a "mixed" user rating on Steam, with a significantly lower number of simultaneous players than the much older original.
Take-Two declined to comment on the fate of the reported layoffs and intercepts as a whole: instead, it was simply repeated, quite verbatim, that 4 May 16SEC submitted about "streamlining the pipeline" — it was killing projects and driving people out of work. "The [Private Sector] label continues to update the Kerbal Space Program2, although it added it - the very C Suite way it says it has a "Private Sector" label."It's not very informative, but it's an interesting choice of words. Given that the Intercept was a developer (or was a developer), I expect it to be believed that it would do game updates, not the private sector.
In a tweet posted after the Bloomberg report was published, whatever remains of the Kerbal Space Program2 team, "We're still working on it." I'm struggling to work with ksp2. Let's talk more when we can.It also repost Take-Two's previous statements about layoffs, including a note saying it "did not provide additional details" about the cuts.
The closure is the latest in a long line of deep cuts that have plagued the industry since the beginning of 2023. Just yesterday, the US Mars Studio KeokeN Interactive laid off its entire workforce, and earlier this month the company of Paria developer Singularity 6 and Heroes Studio Relic Entertainment also made significant cuts to staff deliver.
Take Two representatives further declined to comment.
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