March 30, 2007 -
Paul Eibeler? Outta here.Strauss Zelnick (left) is now the man at Take Two Interactive.
As expected, a shareholder revolt seized control of Take Two's board at yesterday's annual meeting in New York. The fallout was immediate, with embattled CEO Paul Eibeler being shown the door.
As reported by the Associated Press:
A feisty shareholder revolt at Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. this week offed nearly as many executives as virtual characters in the video game company's violent titles.
Financial analysts lauded the move, as did some watchdogs. James Steyer, CEO of Common Sense Media told the AP:
If you look at the content of what these guys have distributed, it's so offensive and inappropriate. It's not surprising to learn they had committed massive acts of fraud at the board and CEO level. The chickens have come home to roost for this company - and I say good riddance to these guys.
GP: While Eibeler was a terrible CEO, Steyer shouldn't expect new management to ditch GTA's violent formula. Without the controversial game series, T2 has little value, a fact that the new owners certainly recognize.
Following the revolt, Zelnick, former CEO of BMG Entertainment, became Chairman of the Board. Ben Feder, formerly of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., is the acting CEO. A post-revolution statement released by Zelnick said:
Take-Two has exceptional brands and creative resources, and we are thrilled to be able to work with the many talented people within the company. The new Board plans to put in place strategies designed to revitalize Take-Two, focus on supporting and enhancing its creative output, improve its margins and ensure that the 2007 release pipeline meets expectations. We are here to maximize the value of Take-Two for shareholders, for game consumers, and for the Company's employees.
Motley Fool analyst Tom Gardner praised the changing of the the guard at Take Two:
In this case... You have backdated options, hidden porn, accounting issues and mismanagement. You have management that was at best incompetent and at worst dishonest.
Comments
The *worst* you could say about Rockstar (y'know, the people who actually did all that) is that they were somewhat irresponsible for not cleaning up all their deleted scenes, but I know for a fact that this kind of thing happens all the time; games get changed, but scenes and graphics are left in the code, and since nobody can officially access it, who cares? If we found out that a famous painting had lewd scenes on the canvas underneath the image we know, painted over when the artist changed his mind, would that make it 'hidden porn'?
But even ignoring that, unless I'm misunderstanding things T2 never had much of anything to do with those scenes. Rockstar did all the coding, not them.
Two groups, and two groups only, made mistakes here. One was Take-Two/Rockstar PR for lying. Two was the ESRB for re-rating the game based on a 3rd party modification (yes, I'm including gameshark in that category) that revealed content already appropriate for the rating (which specified "Mature Sexual Themes" on the box.
I'll tell you right now, gameshark can reveal a whole bunch of things in a whole bunch of shipping games if people are dedicated enough. With Hot Coffee, the ESRB set the terrible precedent that they can re-rate games based on something that is outside the developer's control. This is worse than any of the stupid demagogues pimping M-rated game laws, and I'd like to see the ESRB held accountable for their misdeeds.
But no one wants to do that, they just want to talk about "hidden porn" and "filth". They're just displaying their ignorance.
http://www2.warnerbros.com/madmagazine/files/onthestands/ots_425/grandth...
I highly, HIGHLY doubt that. JT is trying to have two of their upcoming games censored before we even know anything about them, and no, a trailer doesn't count, a trailer doesn't go into gameplay mechanics or anything
And if Take Two and Rockstar had come out about this, well, some people refuse to be satisfied, I think we still wouldn't be going through this, because anyone an agenda will make up lies to get whatever they want, no matter how outrageous.
Anyway, the TTWO/JT lawsuit is the interesting part of all this. Is the suit part of the old leadership's plan, or a part of the new?
Not that i expect anything different from the anti-videogame zealot segment of our society, but i think that is an incredible leap of logic, and one that all gamers everywhere should find offensive. There's basically no connection between the content produced by their subsidiary for the GTA games and the white collar crime that a bunch of corrupt and greedy executives tried to pull over on the shareholders. As silly as it is to think that all of the carjacking, autoaim weapons shooting, and killing prostitutes is training for learning to fire a gun and commit murder, its even more absurd to say that it is training you in how to be a white collar criminal. Or maybe i just missed the SA mission where you are backdating the stock options, stalling federal securities regulators, and preparing false revenue documents with overstated (parked) revenues. Its not like T2 handled any of that stuff CJ-style anyways.
How are they going to "focus on supporting and enhancing its creative output" when they have no idea what that is?
As an aside, Thumper is a mere bird dropping on Take Two's windshield compared to the other problems the company has faced. I'd think people be more interested about the blown head gasket that's gonna blow up the whole engine if not fixed rather than something that can be flicked away with one swoop.
Paul Eibler /should/ of resigned a long, long time ago in order to take responsiblity for what happened. Period.
Hopefully T2 will see better management direction with this change. But I don't expect much from this new sensationalist generation that thrives on gore and violence. Sad part is I'm part of this generation.
While GTA is clearly Take-Two’s private ATM, to call it its only viable resource is incredibly narrowminded. Do not forget the 2K Games and 2K Sports brands. 2K Games is home to Civilization, Elder Scrolls Oblivion to name a couple, and 2K Sports makes the best hockey and basketball games. Yes, they do not sell near as many copies as GTA, but the company would still be viable without it.
They wouldn't be nearly as viable. GTA is Rockstar's big cash crop, and basically gives them the money infusions they need to cover all their lesser games. It basically makes up the difference when a game flops and doesn't perform as expected.
I've learned that if you bring up this sort of thing to politicians though, they don't shift their perspective, they just move to widen their proposed bans.
As a programmer myself I can safely say that any structured code would mean that removal of code does not take that great deal a time. I know what you are saying, and yes you can rem out or fail to use code, but it isn't that time consuming.
What is the key point though is that they announced that it was something a hacker had put in rather than unlocked. This was an outright lie and bad P.R. It could so easily have been avoided with just an apology and recall though and that is what a lot of people find so frustrating. That story could have been over in a week rather than giving JT a career move.
Seconded.
They should be yelling at T2 for their horrible damage control plans, not their game content.
If they had taken two seconds to send out a press release that said, "We are aware there was coding for a sexual minigame in GTA:SA. However, said coding is deactivated and there ias no way to encounter this deleted function of the game without going out of your way to hack the game. We remind you, now, that GTA:SA is a mature rated title. Even if your underaged child is playing, there will still be no sex minigame during his gameplay experience."
All it would've taken is a few moments of damage control. Tell the people it's a hack that is not authorized by the game creators, or T2. They wouldn't have had to recall a single copy, the wouldn't have had to blame their own employees, and all of this could've ended in a week.
However, they decided to freak out and tell people that it's a lie, and that it's not their fault, and that the evil programmers tricked them!! So, ya, they dealt with that gloriously and more than a few people should be fired for it (especially cause they've scared the face of videogames for years to come).
he was bashing GTA and BULLY and MANHUNT hot coffe was 2nd to his dislike of them :P
KotatsuNeko:
You're mostly right, but T2 denied that they ever coded the scenes and blamed the hackers. This is the reason they got into so much trouble. If they had have come out with a press release saying "Sorry people. This was an aborted scene because we wanted it to be Mature not Adult Only so we removed the link to this mini game. We SHOULD have removed the dead code as well to prevent this from happening. We are happy to recall all of the games on the shelves and replace any copies bought with new ones without this code in it..."
Uh, yeah it would be "hidden porn"; especially if the painter sold it saying "No. There is no porn here"
What Rockstar did was sell the work saying "No. There is no porn here" when there was, underneath it all. The fact of the matter is that the code was there, intentionally, and wasn't removed properly when they released it. The fault clearly lies with Rockstar North for doing just that - successful franchise or no.
And as for the painting analogy, you do realize that many artists do paint over previous works to save money on canvas and that others generally start out with a nude before painting the clothes on top?
While I agree that there shouldn't have been a cover-up (if it was that and not a communication error), what many people fail to realize is that this is a common way of removing code from a game. Is it possible to remove it better, yes. However that actually takes much more time than you might think, it's not just a matter of clipping out the offending scene like in a movie. There are considerations on disc balance, code dependencies and QA time that all have to be taken into account. While I understand many of you are upset over the issue, I have a feeling that you would also dislike the games you play to cost more/have to advertise/take longer in order to take care of what is essentially a non-issue.
I think it had everything to do with poor management and little to do with game content, though I doubt you'd ever see another "hot coffe" again, it's likely you'll see little change in the companies overall aproach to things.
Now we just wait for the Ineveitable JBT press release and see what happens.
Well, he has like 2 shares of TT stock, so he's bound to claim credit for the entire coup.
It's fairly short-sighted to think that anybody at T2 would ditch the GTA franchise because of its content; it wouldn't sell if it was all bunnies and sunshine, and it's obvious T2 would constantly be in very bad financial shape without the millions upon millions of sales the series has generated.
If you look at the content of what these guys have distributed, it’s so offensive and inappropriate. It’s not surprising to learn they had committed massive acts of fraud at the board and CEO level. The chickens have come home to roost for this company - and I say good riddance to these guys.""
I suppose you also bitch at Hollywood for making "questionable" stuff and making a profit off it,get a fing clue.
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""Following the revolt, Strauss Zelnick (left), former CEO of BMG Entertainment, became Chairman of the Board. Ben Feder, formerly of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., is the acting CEO. A post-revolution statement released by Zelnick said:
Take-Two has exceptional brands and creative resources, and we are thrilled to be able to work with the many talented people within the company. The new Board plans to put in place strategies designed to revitalize Take-Two, focus on supporting and enhancing its creative output, improve its margins and ensure that the 2007 release pipeline meets expectations. We are here to maximize the value of Take-Two for shareholders, for game consumers, and for the Company’s employees.""
Oh goody cometh the cheap cash in games >>
Urgh. If that little scene in GTA: SA was porn, then it was the lamest porn ever.
No, the stockholders really didn't like the accounting issues and mismanagement, but they really like GTA (Because GTA brings in the dough).
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