Take-Two has sold off its indie label Private Division to an unknown buyer, citing a need to "focus [its] resources on growing [its] core and mobile businesses for the long-term".
In a set of prepared remarks accompanying Take-Two's latest financial results, company president Karl Slatoff says that the transaction involved the mystery buyer "purchas[ing Take-Two's] rights to substantially all of Private Division's live and unreleased titles".
It looks like Early Access action RPG No Rest for the Wicked, which was released back in April, wasn't included in that transaction, though, because Slatoff says that Take-Two "will continue to support" the game. He concludes by thanking Private Division for its "contributions" to Take-Two.
Private Division's fate has been uncertain for some time. When Take-Two laid off 5% of its workforce back in April, a Bloomberg report noted that many of the workers who would lose their jobs as part of that layoff wave were Private Division employees.
Later, in May, evidence began to pile up that Take-Two had shuttered the developers of Kerbal Space Program 2 and Rollerdrome, both of which were games published by Private Division. Take-Two itself, however, denied shutting down those studios.
Towards the end of that same month, Silent Hill 2 remake developer Bloober Team revealed that its partnership with Private Division for an upcoming new horror IP had ended, with Take-Two being the entity that terminated said partnership.
That game may well be new horror project Cronos: The New Dawn, which will now be self-published by Bloober Team. It's circumstantial, of course, but this could be more evidence that Private Division was in the process of being sold even then.
News of Private Division's sale comes as part of Take-Two's Q2 financial report, in which the company announces that net bookings have risen by 6% overall compared to last year.
According to Take-Two, this financial performance was mainly driven by "strength in the Grand Theft Auto and Borderlands franchises", and that's without the release of Grand Theft Auto 6, which is due to arrive next year.
You can see the rest of Take-Two's financial report right here if you're interested in the nerdy stats side of things. We don't yet know to whom Private Division was sold, but it's possible we'll find out in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.
