Take-Two Interactive is selling off its indie games label Private Division, which published titles such as The Outer Worlds and OlliOlli World, following rumors over the summer that Take-Two laid off most of Private Division’s staff.
Take-Two did not disclose the buyer of Private Division or how much they paid. In an emailed statement to The Verge, Take-Two spokesperson Alan Lewis wrote:
We recently made the strategic decision to sell our Private Division label to focus our resources on growing our core and mobile businesses for the long-term. As part of this transaction, the buyer purchased our rights to substantially all of Private Division’s live and unreleased titles.
Take-Two will continue to support No Rest for the Wicked, which launched in Early Access on PC in April. We are grateful for the contributions that the Private Division team has made to our company and are confident that they will continue to achieve success in their new home.
According to Bloomberg, the label has been plagued by “a string of flops, including Kerbal Space Program 2, which was full of bugs and panned by fans.” Private Division games, including the upcoming The Lord of the Rings farm simulator Tales of the Shire, as well as Pokémon developer Game Freak’s untitled game known as Project Bloom, will move over to the new buyer. However, Private Divison’s buyer won’t get the rights to No Rest for the Wicked.
Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick told GamesIndustry.biz that the buyer would be named soon and said, “The team of Private Division did a great job supporting independent developers and, almost to a one, every project they supported did well. However, the scale of those projects was, candidly, on the smaller side, and we’re in the business of making great big hits,” like the upcoming Grand Theft Auto VI.