Take-Two decides to sell its independent video game label, Private Division.
What will the future of the Bloom Project be?
Take-Two Interactive has decided to sell its indie video game label, Private Division, known for publishing titles like The Outer Worlds and OlliOlli World. This decision comes after summer rumors regarding the layoffs of most of Private Division's staff.
The company has not revealed who the buyer is or the amount involved in the transaction. In a statement sent via email, a representative from Take-Two mentioned that the company has made the strategic decision to divest this label in order to focus efforts on growing its core and mobile businesses in the long term. As part of this agreement, the buyer acquired the rights to almost all of Private Division's live and unreleased titles. However, Take-Two will continue to support No Rest for the Wicked, which was released in early access on PC in April. The statement also expressed gratitude for the contributions of the Private Division team and confidence that they will continue to succeed in their new environment.
Reports indicate that Private Division has faced difficulties, including some failures like Kerbal Space Program 2, which was criticized for being buggy and received poor reviews from fans. Upcoming projects, such as the farming simulator Tales of the Shire based on The Lord of the Rings and the untitled video game from Game Freak known as Project Bloom, will also be part of the sale. However, the rights to No Rest for the Wicked will not be transferred to the new owner.
Take-Two's CEO, Strauss Zelnick, commented that the name of the buyer will be announced soon and emphasized that, while the Private Division team did a great job supporting indie developers and many projects were successful, the scale of these initiatives was relatively small compared to the company’s ambitions, which focus on creating major hits like the upcoming Grand Theft Auto VI.