Do you understand what Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick is saying here about Roll7 and Intercept? Someone make it make sense

Ok, so, you remember when it looked an awful lot like Take-Two was shutting down both Kerbal Space Program 2 developer Intercept Games and Roll7 - the studio behind Rollerdrome and OlliOlli World - earlier this month? Well, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has now said that it "didn't shutter" the studios, leaving us all wondering whether they still, er, actually exist.

Yes, this is a thing. If you're out of the loop, the shutterings - hinted at by internal documentation from Roll7 and a notice filed with the Washington State Employment Security Department - were reportedly part of cuts Take-Two revealed plans for via an SEC filing in April. Naturally, both people in the industry and players weren't exactly pleased to hear either bit of news, but Zelnick now seems to have cast some doubt over what's actually happening in pretty baffling fashion.

In response to IGN asking during yesterday's Take-Two earnings call why the apparent closures of Intercept and Roll7 had happened, the CEO said the following:

"We didn't shutter those studios, to be clear. 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."

When asked whether this response mean the company was denying the reports, a Take-Two PR rep responded: "What we've said is, in the 8-K filing that we put out we talked about the cost reduction plan is approximately 5% reduction in headcount worldwide, but we did not give a label-by-label breakdown of what that looks like."

So, yeah, Take-Two looks to be saying that it is cutting those costs it outlined, but hasn't actually shut down the studios, despite that evidence - illustrated by a note to Roll7 employees which Bloomberg's Jason Schreier has now shared a snippet from on Twitter in response to Zelnick's comments - having suggested that shut down proceedings were either already underway or at least in the works to some degree.

What does it all mean? We, like a lot of other people, are stuggling to make it all make sense. The studios having been folded into Private Division in some way still looks like a possible explanation, but this would be a strange way for us to potentially learn that.

Regardless, this isn't the first time a studio would have ended up in a weird kind of verbal purgatory with Take-Two, with BioShock 2 developer 2K Marin seemingly still not having had its closure officially acknowledged by the publisher, despite reportedly having been all but shuttered in 2013.

In the report that accompanied this call, Take-Two was thankfully less cryptic when it came to GTA 6's release window, which has been narrowed down to fall 2025.