Take-Two sells this 7-year-old publishing label, here's what CEO Strauss Zelnick said

Take-Two Interactive which owns GTA maker Rockstar has sold its indie publishing label , Private Division . The company has also sold most of the games associated with the label to an undisclosed buyer. The sale includes both live and unreleased titles, with the exception of the early access action RPG, No Rest for the Wicked , which Take-Two will continue to support.

Private Division, launched in 2017, aimed to help independent developers achieve commercial success with their games. While it saw early success with titles like The Outer Worlds , recent releases like Kerbal Space Program 2 have underperformed.

During an investor call, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick indicated that the sale was not solely due to these flops, but rather because even the label's successful titles did not meet the company's expectations for scale. This suggests that Take-Two is shifting its focus towards larger-scale projects and blockbuster franchises.


What Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said


During the latest investors call, Take-Two CEO and chairman Strauss Zelnick said: “We're really impressed with what Michael Worosz and the team built with Private Division. They brought onboard and launched a number of titles over the past several years, and virtually all of them worked out, and a couple of them were pretty big breakouts. At the same time, it became clear that our thesis, which is ‘work with independent developers, bring them into this independently minded division, and perhaps create new, huge, durable intellectual properties for the company,' was going to be challenging at best.

The titles, though big, were not big in the context of our core intellectual properties at 2K and Rockstar. And our job really is to focus on making the biggest and best hits in the marketplace. We're not the long tail company. We are top-ten hit makers around here. That's where we are on the console side, that's where we are on the mobile side, and that is the core of any mature entertainment business—being a top ten player.”


Take-Two shut down 2 more gaming studios


Take-Two also confirmed the closure of two more game development studios, Intercept Games (developer of Kerbal Space Program 2) and Roll7 (creator of the OlliOlli series). The closures, initially reported in May amidst layoffs at Take-Two, were later contradicted by CEO Strauss Zelnick. However, a company representative later clarified to GamesIndustry that both studios were indeed shut down before the recent sale of Private Division.

This confirmation comes months after the initial reports and adds to the list of studios impacted by Take-Two's restructuring efforts. The buyer of Private Division, which will acquire most of the label's games and potentially some of its studios, is also expected to be announced soon.