Slashdot Mirror
Rockstar Vienna Closes Its Doors
slashflood writes "Rockstar has unexpectedly closed its Rockstar Vienna development office, particularly known for its Grand Theft Auto Xbox conversion, laying off more than 100 employees. Confirmation has come in the form of a weblog post by Rockstar Vienna employee Jurie Horneman: 'This morning, as I came into work, I was greeted by security guards. It turned out Take-Two has closed their Rockstar Vienna office, effective immediately, 'due to the challenging environment facing the video game business and our Company during this platform transition'.'"
That all relies on actually being able to GET unemployment benefits. I have tried to apply for unemployment benefits twice in my life. The first time I found a new job before they could start (hooray). The second time, Tennessee had changed to a phone-based application system, and the phone system had NO HOLD QUEUE. I called 4-8 times a day every day for a month (the application window) and got either a busy signal, an "all operators are busy, try again later. CLICK" hangup, or a "our normal business hours are..." message if i messed up and called after 5 PM. I can see how this is advantageous to the government, as it saves money in unemployment payments AND lets them lie about unemployment rates even more than usual. But it sucked for me.