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As part of their filing of an 8-K form after undergoing management changes recently, Take-Two Interactive disclosed that an informal probe by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has turned formal. This from Herb Greenberg's market blog on Market Watch.

The informal probe was originally just about stock options and was disclosed by Take-Two last July. According to Greenberg, Take-Two said that it was advised of the formal probe on March 15. The formal order "allows the SEC, among other things, to subpoena witnesses."

Greenberg surmises that the probe extends beyond the stock options issue, as suggested by the "among other things" phrase. Take-Two has already received multiple subpoenas from the New York County Grand Jury regarding accounting issues as well as the stock options issue.

Take-Two Interactive owns Rockstar Games (Rockstar North, Rockstar Leeds, etc.), the creator of the Grand Theft Auto series. Other T2 subsidiaries include 2K Games and 2K Sports.

T2 continues to face woes at the hands of NASDAQ (the stock exchange) and the SEC (the US government's Securities and Exchange Commission). And T2's internal investigation into their stock options grants has discovered "significant" backdating.

"Backdating" stock grants means incorrectly dating the stock grants given to company employees so that their values are artificially inflated (the stock values will be based on higher past values).

In the stock investigation case, Take-Two will be forced to look over and restate their earnings reports from April 1997 to August 2003, which will have tax and accounting impacts on their financial statements.

Now Gamasutra reports that NASDAQ warned Take-Two (again) that they will be delisted or removed from the stock exchange for being late for reporting something (again).

The NASDAQ delisting might be worrisome. NASDAQ is complaining that Take-Two did not file its 10K financial report for this fiscal year (that's a big requirement). Take-Two reps have indicated that they "have an understanding" with NASDAQ that the company will continue to be listed in that stock market for the time being, as long as Take-Two make up their delinquencies and other shortcomings to the market by this March.

Yeah, all this economic mumbo-jumbo might seem meaningless to the gaming community - at least the consumer side - but it is rather important to the producer/publisher side of the community. With the price one must pay to make a game these days, especially a next-gen game, it's important to find sources of cash to lavish on one's developers. The stock market is one such source - not to mention one key indicator of the company's performance.

If Take-Two were delisted from NASDAQ, it would be a big blow to Take-Two's reputation in the market. Investors would be less likely to bet on the company, and the publisher would thus have less money to spend on all of their devs and games. Maybe not immediately, maybe only in the long run, but like one important economist said: in the long run, we're all dead.