Take-Two Poaches Employees From Their Own Developer

This is a summary of an article from the talented Jason Schreier. Please give it a read at Bloomberg.com.

Take-Two was working with developer Star Theory Games to make a sequel to the popular Kerby Space Program. The process was two years in when the companies needed to negotiate additional contracts. The talks soured and Take-Two went on the offensive. They started their own development team and began messaging all the employees of Star Theory Games offering them a sign-on bonus to work on the game they already had two years progress on.

Star Theory bosses Bob Berry and Jonathan Mavor told their employees that they will work on getting new contracts and pleaded for employees to stick around. Unfortunately, the numbers dwindled quickly as employees moved to Take-Two’s new dev studio. This was made even more difficult after COVID hit the developers hard. Three months after the negotiations, Star Theory had to close its doors.

Take-Two’s aggressive practices create a bulling business plan designed to drive out the little man. Even bigger companies could take to this strategy and further lead to gaming monopolies and decreasing innovation. We will be discussing this on next week’s podcast. Please read the full article on Bloomberg.com by Jason Schreier.