GTA 6 publisher Take-Two reportedly shutting Roll7 and Intercept Games

As if KSP2's development wasn't slow enough...

Hmmm . . . so, 70 people, at $100,000 each, would be 7 million dollars. Mr. CEO gave himself a raise of 26 million dollars. I wonder where they could possibly have found the money to keep paying those people?

"It's worth noting at this point that Take-Two's CEO, Strauss Zelnick, was paid $42.1 million last year, which is more than two-and-a-half times the previous year. So once again, the people at the top are pulling in big numbers while cutting the people doing the work."

This is absolutely disgusting. I know these people have no shame, but I wish I could be dictator of earth for just a few minutes with the sole goal of throwing this person in jail for life in the bottom of a dark pit with lots of other horrible things down there to keep him company.

Hmmm . . . so, 70 people, at $100,000 each, would be 7 million dollars. Mr. CEO gave himself a raise of 26 million dollars. I wonder where they could possibly have found the money to keep paying those people?

Yep. Absolute scum.

It's worth noting at this point that Take-Two's CEO, Strauss Zelnick, was paid $42.1 million last year, which is more than two-and-a-half times the previous year. So once again, the people at the top are pulling in big numbers while cutting the people doing the work.

This needs to be pointed out more often. No one deserves this high a salary, especially at the expense of those that earn much less. Plain greed.

It's worth noting at this point that Take-Two's CEO, Strauss Zelnick, was paid $42.1 million last year, which is more than two-and-a-half times the previous year. So once again, the people at the top are pulling in big numbers while cutting the people doing the work.

This needs to be pointed out more often. No one deserves this high a salary, especially at the expense of those that earn much less. Plain greed.

What's the correct number for them to make ? How do you arrive at that number ? Who gets to decide ? I'm not trying to defend Take Two but at the same time trying to dictate how much people are allowed to make is a recipe for a different form of tyranny.

It's worth noting at this point that Take-Two's CEO, Strauss Zelnick, was paid $42.1 million last year, which is more than two-and-a-half times the previous year. So once again, the people at the top are pulling in big numbers while cutting the people doing the work.

This needs to be pointed out more often. No one deserves this high a salary, especially at the expense of those that earn much less. Plain greed.

What's the correct number for them to make ? How do you arrive at that number ? Who gets to decide ? I'm not trying to defend Take Two but at the same time trying to dictate how much people are allowed to make is a recipe for a different form of tyranny.

The salary should reflect somebody's productivity. I didn't make that up, economic theory did. And you can't sell me the idea that a CEO is more productive during his potty break than one of his developers during an entire year, without making me burst out in hysterical laughter.

These people stuff their pockets with money until they burst because they can, that's all there is to it.

What's the correct number for them to make ? How do you arrive at that number ? Who gets to decide ? I'm not trying to defend Take Two but at the same time trying to dictate how much people are allowed to make is a recipe for a different form of tyranny.

I mean the people who give themselves millions of dollars in bonuses certainly think they're allowed to decide how much people are allowed to make. I don't think you'll make too many working class friends for defending these people for capping peoples ability to make money for their own benefit though... And yes the standard model for a business under capitalism is indeed a tyranny with someone at the top calling all the shots to maintain their position of power and wealth.

It's worth noting at this point that Take-Two's CEO, Strauss Zelnick, was paid $42.1 million last year, which is more than two-and-a-half times the previous year. So once again, the people at the top are pulling in big numbers while cutting the people doing the work.

This needs to be pointed out more often. No one deserves this high a salary, especially at the expense of those that earn much less. Plain greed.

What's the correct number for them to make ? How do you arrive at that number ? Who gets to decide ? I'm not trying to defend Take Two but at the same time trying to dictate how much people are allowed to make is a recipe for a different form of tyranny.

Well, the correct amount for those developers to make is apparently zero, and who got to decide was a guy who pocketed, as a raise, more than double their collective salary. So I'd say your question, not to mention your fears of tyranny, are a bit more urgently pointed back at you.
I'll be frank: Anyone making more than a million bucks a year, I really don't give the tiniest damn about his so-precious freedom to make all that dough, or the horrors of a tyranny that would take it away from him. Fuck those guys and the imaginary job creation they rode in on.
Who gets to decide? How about all those people he stole the salaries of? How about all the other people CEOs decide their wages shouldn't be enough to make rent?


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 2 May 2024 at 8:43 pm UTC

"It's worth noting at this point that Take-Two's CEO, Strauss Zelnick, was paid $42.1 million last year, which is more than two-and-a-half times the previous year. So once again, the people at the top are pulling in big numbers while cutting the people doing the work."

This is absolutely disgusting. I know these people have no shame, but I wish I could be dictator of earth for just a few minutes with the sole goal of throwing this person in jail for life in the bottom of a dark pit with lots of other horrible things down there to keep him company.

There is plausible genocide right now in progress in gaza, on other side you have terorists from hamas murdering civilians, there is war in ukraine where psychopath putin killing thousands of people just for his ego, and lot of anouther wars we have totalitarian tendencies in practicaly every government and when you get power to change any of it, you just care for salary of Take Two CEO. I think you need better priorities...

welp, there goes kerbal space program 2...


Last edited by Viesta2015 on 2 May 2024 at 10:24 pm UTC

"It's worth noting at this point that Take-Two's CEO, Strauss Zelnick, was paid $42.1 million last year, which is more than two-and-a-half times the previous year. So once again, the people at the top are pulling in big numbers while cutting the people doing the work."

This is absolutely disgusting. I know these people have no shame, but I wish I could be dictator of earth for just a few minutes with the sole goal of throwing this person in jail for life in the bottom of a dark pit with lots of other horrible things down there to keep him company.

There is plausible genocide right now in progress in gaza, on other side you have terorists from hamas murdering civilians, there is war in ukraine where psychopath putin killing thousands of people just for his ego, and lot of anouther wars we have totalitarian tendencies in practicaly every government and when you get power to change any of it, you just care for salary of Take Two CEO. I think you need better priorities...

OK, that's stupid. So first, does that mean you getting mugged would be perfectly OK because, after all, bigger things are happening elsewhere? Big injustices do not make smaller injustices stop existing. Virtually none of the people protesting genocide in Gaza would tell you that massive CEO salaries are just fine.

Second, there is a strong link between the general phenomenon of massive wealth at the very top and the totalitarian tendencies in government. Bottom line, rich people suppress effective democracy because it tends to oppose their project of buying the government. The interests of the very rich (such as this CEO) are somewhat opposed to the interests of most ordinary people, so they use their money to make sure they have power and everyone else doesn't, so their agenda cannot be effectively blocked. So, this particular fat cat grabbing all the money that could have gone to people he's laying off is in fact an instance of the broader problem causing most of the troubles you're talking about. Most wars represent a subset of this issue--governments operating on behalf of corporations with interests in the region (oil, minerals, sweatshops, markets) and on behalf of arms manufacturers and their profits. Recognizing the individual example helps to recognize the general issue. Your objection is completely wrongheaded.

Sidebar on Ukraine:

Spoiler, click me

(And incidentally no, Putin is not fighting that war because of his ego or any other unusual aspect of his personality. He's fighting it for reasons of realpolitik; it's ruthless, but if you transplanted any major decision maker from any NATO country into his position, they would have done the same, except maybe sooner because most of them are less patient than Putin. For various reasons, every powerbroker in Russia favours that war--trying to end it is probably one of the few things that could get him deposed. The weird thing about all this is, early on Putin wanted to join the West--he asked about Russia joining NATO, joining the EU, doing free trade agreements, all that stuff. For years after that failed he talked about security agreements/frameworks. We turned him down every time and made it clear we just wanted to beat Russia. Now he's our enemy and he's fighting to win, but that was our decision)

Perhaps I'm pretty dumb on word meanings, but I have always considered a genocide to be a situation where there is an effort to eliminate an ENTIRE race/class of people.

According to https://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/gaza-population, there are/were ~800,000 people currently in Gaza.

According to https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-gaza-war-statistics-95a6407fac94e9d589be234708cd5005 as of April 6th, about 35,000 Hamas and Hamas supporters have been killed since the events of October 7.

Shouldn't a genocide be achieving much higher death numbers? Why aren't more Gazans dead if the goal was to eliminate them via genocide?


Last edited by TherinS on 3 May 2024 at 2:51 am UTC

People who assume that if CEOs were paid less, then the workers could be paid more, have a rather simplistic and naive understanding of how business and the economy works.

Let's put it this way: if an employee's salary exceeds the amount of income he generates for the company, then there are two options: 1) Reduce his salary; or 2) Terminate his employment. The CEO giving up a raise to pay the employee more, therefore making the disparity between his salary and his value to the company even greater, is perhaps the worst decision in this case. You can extrapolate this to an entire studio.

That's just the reality of being an employee, you are always at the mercy of someone else, which can kinda suck sometimes. The only way out is to start your own business and work for yourself.

People who assume that if CEOs were paid less, then the workers could be paid more, have a rather simplistic and naive understanding of how business and the economy works.

And yet, going by history it seems to work out in practice. Look at places and times where the CEOs are paid less, and you find workers who are more prosperous and have better working conditions.

Perhaps I'm pretty dumb on word meanings, but I have always considered a genocide to be a situation where there is an effort to eliminate an ENTIRE race/class of people.

An effort, yes . . . but if you look at the definition under international law, you'll find it doesn't have to be as extensive as you might imagine to qualify. So for instance, killing a bunch and ethnic cleansing the rest seems to qualify. Trying to starve them all to death qualifies too. Since top Israeli officials have repeatedly stated their intentions to do all those things, I'm not sure the fact that they have not yet succeeded means they're not trying to commit genocide. Should we wait until they're all dead before taking issue?

According to https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-gaza-war-statistics-95a6407fac94e9d589be234708cd5005 as of April 6th, about 35,000 Hamas and Hamas supporters have been killed since the events of October 7.

Ah, yes, all those vicious Hamas-supporting babies and toddlers.
In any case, that figure is not really accurate, for two reasons. The first reason is that most of the people buried under rubble aren't counted--they're just "missing" until someone digs them out, which is hard when you're likely to get bombed or sniped in the attempt. The second reason is that it doesn't count indirect deaths, such as from disease, failed surgery due to no working hospitals, or starvation. We are reaching the point where that last one will start to kill in quite large numbers, due to Israel systematically murdering aid workers trying to bring food.

Shouldn't a genocide be achieving much higher death numbers? Why aren't more Gazans dead if the goal was to eliminate them via genocide?

Mainly because it is actually quite difficult to kill truly massive numbers of people using non-nuclear bombs. Bomb supply is limited, and the victims tend to be unwilling to all stand grouped together in the open for your convenience. Although the systematic starvation is capable of causing much more widespread death. I seem to remember previous cases where a group was trapped in a ghetto and food was systematically stopped from getting in, and although it's slow it does tend to kill them.

So tell me, do you have any idea how callous you're being or is your turning of a blind eye so successful that you're unaware?

Why are we even talking about this? I thought the topic was layoffs by obscenely wealthy CEOs.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 3 May 2024 at 5:30 am UTC

"It's worth noting at this point that Take-Two's CEO, Strauss Zelnick, was paid $42.1 million last year, which is more than two-and-a-half times the previous year. So once again, the people at the top are pulling in big numbers while cutting the people doing the work."

This is absolutely disgusting. I know these people have no shame, but I wish I could be dictator of earth for just a few minutes with the sole goal of throwing this person in jail for life in the bottom of a dark pit with lots of other horrible things down there to keep him company.

There is plausible genocide right now in progress in gaza, on other side you have terorists from hamas murdering civilians, there is war in ukraine where psychopath putin killing thousands of people just for his ego, and lot of anouther wars we have totalitarian tendencies in practicaly every government and when you get power to change any of it, you just care for salary of Take Two CEO. I think you need better priorities...

OK, that's stupid. So first, does that mean you getting mugged would be perfectly OK because, after all, bigger things are happening elsewhere? Big injustices do not make smaller injustices stop existing. Virtually none of the people protesting genocide in Gaza would tell you that massive CEO salaries are just fine.

Second, there is a strong link between the general phenomenon of massive wealth at the very top and the totalitarian tendencies in government. Bottom line, rich people suppress effective democracy because it tends to oppose their project of buying the government. The interests of the very rich (such as this CEO) are somewhat opposed to the interests of most ordinary people, so they use their money to make sure they have power and everyone else doesn't, so their agenda cannot be effectively blocked. So, this particular fat cat grabbing all the money that could have gone to people he's laying off is in fact an instance of the broader problem causing most of the troubles you're talking about. Most wars represent a subset of this issue--governments operating on behalf of corporations with interests in the region (oil, minerals, sweatshops, markets) and on behalf of arms manufacturers and their profits. Recognizing the individual example helps to recognize the general issue. Your objection is completely wrongheaded.

Sidebar on Ukraine:

Spoiler, click me

(And incidentally no, Putin is not fighting that war because of his ego or any other unusual aspect of his personality. He's fighting it for reasons of realpolitik; it's ruthless, but if you transplanted any major decision maker from any NATO country into his position, they would have done the same, except maybe sooner because most of them are less patient than Putin. For various reasons, every powerbroker in Russia favours that war--trying to end it is probably one of the few things that could get him deposed. The weird thing about all this is, early on Putin wanted to join the West--he asked about Russia joining NATO, joining the EU, doing free trade agreements, all that stuff. For years after that failed he talked about security agreements/frameworks. We turned him down every time and made it clear we just wanted to beat Russia. Now he's our enemy and he's fighting to win, but that was our decision)

He wrote what problem he would solve if he had absolute disposable power. Regardless of whether I consider high CEO pay to be a problem, jailing one CEO is a bad priority when there are far worse problems. So your argument is stupid not mine. Notice I wrote about misplaced priorities. If we have a protester again genocide in gaze, we know he considers genocide a bigger problem and thus would use that power to solve that problem. Not jailing one guy on his salary. How do we know that? He's protesting genocide, not CEO pay. After genocide is stopped, he can start protest agains salary, but just now, his priority is genocide.


If you have a problem with the super-rich, isn't a better approach to address the underlying problem and therefore printing money? Because without that, income inequality would be much less. Instead he chooses a primitive vendetta against one guy, which solves nothing.

Since top Israeli officials have repeatedly stated their intentions to do all those things, I'm not sure the fact that they have not yet succeeded means they're not trying to commit genocide. Should we wait until they're all dead before taking issue?

I seem to recall that the stated goal of Hamas since its rise to power is the complete genocide of Israelis from the area. I'm not sure the fact that they have not yet succeeded means they're not trying to commit genocide. Should we wait until they're all dead before taking issue?

Ah, yes, all those vicious Hamas-supporting babies and toddlers.

When Hamas chooses to hide in/around/under hospitals, schools, refugee camps and the like, it naturally becomes difficult to only hit the Hamas. We're not talking about a force with established uniforms, insignia, and other identifiable markings, so the choice to fire on suspects has been withheld so many more times than half the world realizes. Innocent victims happen when Hamas takes actions like this.

Mainly because it is actually quite difficult to kill truly massive numbers of people using non-nuclear bombs. Bomb supply is limited, and the victims tend to be unwilling to all stand grouped together in the open for your convenience. Although the systematic starvation is capable of causing much more widespread death. I seem to remember previous cases where a group was trapped in a ghetto and food was systematically stopped from getting in, and although it's slow it does tend to kill them.

So tell me, do you have any idea how callous you're being or is your turning of a blind eye so successful that you're unaware?

A few hundred Hamas, supporters, and journalists devastated a non-combative enclave on Oct 7, killing over 1,200 innocents. Your point of having people clustered together making it easier to be killed is exactly on point. I, too, recall a historical time where a Jewish population was genocided on a massive scale. Who were those National Socialist party members, and how long did they court the People Living In The Region Of Palestine (PLITROPs, my own acronym) to assist thier cause? To whom is half the world giving the blind eye treatment today?

Yes, this has no relation to the original topic but the mention was brought up in a post by sometime who was not you or me.


Last edited by TherinS on 3 May 2024 at 1:26 pm UTC