Grand Theft Auto and Borderlands publisher Take-Two Interactive has announced the sale of its independent publishing imprint Private Division. Additionally, the company finally confirmed the closure of OlliOlli World developer Roll7 and Kerbal Space Program 2’s Intercept Games, six months after CEO Strauss Zelnick insisted: “We’re not closing those studios.”
Take-Two announced the formation of a Private Division in 2017, specifically to publish games from smaller independent teams. Since then, he’s launched ventures like Obsidian Entertainment’s The Outer Worlds and Moon Studios’ No Rest for the Wicked, created a new development team, Intercept Games, to create a sequel to Kerbal Space Program 2, and even acquired Roll7, which he later released OlliOlli World and Rollerdrome.
However, 2023 brought news of layoffs at Private Division, and a flurry of reports in May suggested a major shift in the label’s strategy. A previously announced publishing deal with Silent Hill 2 Remake developer Bloober Team was cancelled, and massive layoffs were reported at Roll7 and Intercept Games, as part of a five percent reduction in company-wide staff, which effectively ended the studies. This despite CEO Strauss Zelnick later insisting: “We did not close [them]Shortly after, it was reported that Take-Two was looking to sell Private Division amid rumors that only a skeleton team remained at the label to work on No Rest for the Wicked.
And now, as part of its second quarter 2025 earnings report, Take-Two has confirmed the sale of Private Division. “We recently made the strategic decision to sell [the] label to focus our resources on growing our core and mobile businesses over the long term,” Zelnick said in prepared remarks. “As part of this transaction, the buyer purchased our rights to substantially all of Private Division’s live and unreleased titles.” ., Take-Two, which has not revealed the buyer of Private Division, will continue to support No Rest for the Wicked despite the sale.
“The Private Division team did a great job supporting indie developers, and almost all of the projects they supported performed well,” Zelnick said in separate comments made to GamesIndustry.biz. “However, the scale of those projects was, frankly, smaller, and we are in the business of making big hits.” Additionally, a Take-Two spokesperson confirmed that Roll7 and Intercept Games were closed prior to the sale of Private Division.
