Earlier this year, Take-Two announced layoffs at Private Division and shut down studios under the label such as Roll7, and in its latest fiscal reports, the company has confirmed that it sold Private Division to an undisclosed buyer.
Private Division was a branch built to focus on smaller indie titles, and was arguably one of the best indie publishers out there. The aforementioned Roll7 who Private Division even purchased is responsible for two outstanding titles in Rollerdrome and OlliOlli World which both launched in 2022.
Though when speaking to GamesIndustry.Biz, head of Take-Two Strauss Zelnick now says what these layoffs and now this sale already made clear, that Take-Two simply isn’t interested in the scale of games Private Division supported.
“We made this strategic decision so that we could focus all of our resources on growing our core and mobile businesses for the long term,” said Zelnick.
“We’re really best at these big AAA experiences. We have the biggest intellectual properties in the interactive entertainment business, some of the biggest intellectual properties in the overall entertainment business and to make sequels to existing beloved franchises as well as to create new hit intellectual properties is our mission.”
“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.”
If only Zelnick had realized this before laying off hundreds of developers who had done nothing besides support and make games that were award-winning and critically acclaimed.
What’s curious about all this though, is who bought Private Division, and why? The staff that made the publishing house what it was are all gone, and the developers who worked at the studios previously under the division are now off doing something else.
It’ll be interesting to see what the future of the Private Division label holds, if it holds anything. Not every situation is going to work out the way things did for Tango Gameworks, and that’s not even totally comparable seeing as how that’s just one studio instead of a publishing house with multiple teams.
But wouldn’t it be wonderful if a version of that happened here, and Private Division could return to supporting world-class indie games. We can only hope to be so lucky.
Source – [GamesIndustry.Biz]