Pushing Buttons: With creative developers shutting everywhere, the future of games looks bleaker and more boring

UK indie outfit Roll7 is reportedly facing closure, along with Bethesda’s Tango Gameworks and Arkane Austin – but if making award-running, profitable games doesn’t guarantee safety, what will?

Last month the games company Take-Two Interactive announced it would reduce its global staff by 5%, laying off 580 people to reduce costs. It was one of many such announcements in 2024, but this case is especially egregious because Take-Two ownsRockstar Games, which publishes Grand Theft Auto, AKA the most successful game in the history of the world, and is definitely not short of profits. Last week, Bloomberg (£) reported on internal documentation showing the likely victims of these cuts: studios Intercept Games in Seattle and Roll7 in London are set to close. Both are part of Private Division, the giant publisher’s indie game label.

I spent some time with Intercept’s Kerbal Space Program 2 last year, when they were gearing up to launch. This exceptionally nerdy game about getting tiny green astronauts into space, which hews so closely to the real life physics of space flight that it inspired a generation of engineering students, has had a troubled time. It had been through a studio closure and a change of developer already, and its early-access launch did not exactly go without a hitch (Rock Paper Shotgun called it a “hot mess”). Kerbal Space Program 2 deserves a chance to turn things around, but it is understandable why its developer ended up on the block.