Take-Two Is Reportedly Shutting Down Private Division Entirely, If It Can’t Sell It First

A new report from IGN reveals that Take-Two is looking to get rid of its indie label publisher Private Division entirely, whether that’s but shutting it all down, or selling it off.

The month of May began with the news that Roll7 and Intercept Games would be shuttered. A befuddling decision, particularly considering that Roll7’s last two games had been critical hits beloved by those who played it.

A year after winning a BAFTA for one of the two stellar games it released in the same year, it’s doors are closing. Then a little while later, Take-Two chief executive officer Strauss Zelnick played semantics, again with IGN, saying that “we didn’t shutter those studios.”

Now according to this latest report, while that was true when Zelnick said it, what he left out was that the plan is to slowly but surely get Private Division off Take-Two’s portfolio.

IGN reports that post layoffs there’s a skeleton crew left to keep it going for a short time longer and support contracts Private Division has with a few select projects.

Roll7 has a few team members left to wrap things up, as does Intercept Games, while Private Division will only continue to support No Rest For The Wicked from Moon Studios, Tales Of The Shire from Wētā Workshop, and a coming unknown project from Game Freak.

Everything else is being dropped, as we saw with Private Division backing out of its deal with Bloober Team.

Beyond those projects it is sticking around for, Take-Two is looking to sell what it can, specifically the Kerbal Space Program IP, and potentially Intercept Games with it, though that’s not necessary in Take-Two’s view. It’ll either be sold or shut down. Or both, depending on the new parent company.

A private equity firm is said to be interested in Private Division, though it’s unclear if a deal will be reached.

Sources for the report called out poor leadership from Take-Two and Private Division’s head and chief strategy officer Michael Worosz.

They also call out their displeasure for working under Take-Two, but despite all that these same sources call out that they would’ve loved to keep going for all the people they worked with.

One source described their colleagues as “amazing, talented, passionate individuals who loved what they did and also really cared about each other as a team and as people.”

Source – [IGN]