Kerbal Space Program developers confirm layoffs are coming at the end of June

A month after a Bloomberg report claimed that Kerbal Space Program 2 developer Intercept Games would be closed at the end of June, multiple employees have confirmed that numerous workers, and possibly the whole team, are being laid off.

The initial report was backed by an April Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) indicating that 70 employees at Take-Two's Seattle office would be laid off as of June 28, and that the studio would be closed. Take-Two declined to comment, but a couple weeks later Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said Intercept and OlliOlli developer Roll7, which was also reportedly closing, had not been shut down.

«We didn't shutter those studios, to be clear,» Zelnick said. «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.»

What that actually meant—that the initial closure report was incorrect, that the studios simply hadn't been closed at that point, or that they'd been gutted but would continue to exist as zombie corporate entities—wasn't clear, and elaboration was not forthcoming.

Whatever fate awaits Intercept, it will apparently be without a large number of its employees—possibly all of them. «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,» senior design manager Quinn Duffy wrote on LinkedIn. «As will I.

»I got to know the designers pretty well in my all-too-brief time there. These are some fantastically smart and talented people and I'm happy to vouch for their qualities. And I can say the same about the other disciplines—good folks across the board."

«My teammates and I at Intercept Games have been affected by the recent layoffs at the