IGN claims that Take-Two told Private Division employees in February that layoffs were imminent, but without offering details about the scope or reasons. At the end of April, the label’s management addressed the workforce to inform them that Take-Two would no longer support the division, at which point almost all staff were let go. Today Private Division maintains a small team to support the games with which it still has an agreement, including No Rest for the Wicked (Moon Studios), Tales of the Shire (Weta Workshop) and a title known as Project Bloom developed by Game Freak (Pokémon).
As part of the dismantling of Private Division, Take-Two has shed several publishing deals, including one it had signed with Bloober Team (Silent Hill 2, The Medium) and another with Ghostrunner developer One More Level. We have also recently learned that Eternal Strands, an action, fantasy and adventure game from the creative director of Dragon Age, will not be published by Private Division as announced.
Private Division’s destiny seems to be the disappearance, but before lowering the shutters, the publishing label Take-Two is trying to dispose of all its assets. According to IGN, the company has held talks to sell the Kerbal Space Program intellectual property (with or without Intercept Games) to Paradox Interactive, but the negotiations have not come to fruition. Take-Two is also looking for a buyer for the Private Division label and there is a private equity firm that seems interested, but an agreement has not yet been reached.
Perhaps some of you have recently read that Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Take-Two, denied the closure of Intercept Games and Roll7 that Bloomberg had advanced. He said that at the beginning of the month and it was technically true, at that time both studios had not closed, but they were already sentenced. According to IGN, Intercept Games will say goodbye on June 28 after the notice period dictated by Washington state law, while at Roll7 there is only a small team left to finish tying up the last loose ends.
IGN’s sources explain that Private Division was a label with talented people who really helped small studios publish their games, but the main enemy was at home. All the testimonies coincide in pointing out the mismanagement of Michael Worosz, director of strategy at Take-Two and head of Private Division. Insiders claim that Worosz imposed crazy sales targets on the label and pushed for games to be released before they were ready, Kerbal Space Program 2 being an example.
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