Take-Two Interactive has dropped Private Division, and their entire initiative to make smaller games alongside it.
As reported by GamesIndustry.Biz, Take-Two finally officially confirmed that they had closed Roll7 and Intercept Games. Roll7 made the very addictive Olli Olli skateboarding game, as well as the award winning third person shooter Rollerdrome.
Intercept Games was founded by Take-Two to take on development of Kerbal Space Program 2, in circumstances that were both suspicious and incredibly convoluted. You can read more about it here.
Throughout the year, we had reported on the uncertain state of the two studios, as the rumor first dropped that they were closing, only for Take-Two to deny that they had been closed. As best as we can tell, Take-Two took advantage of existing rules and laws in the state these studios were based in, so they could technically say they hadn’t closed these studios, even if the decisions had already been made.
Around the same time, there were reports that Take-Two’s private label for smaller games, called Private Division, had also suffered layoffs. CEO Strauss Zelnick himself confirmed that Private Division has been sold, and the buyer will reveal themselves sometime in the future.
Tying up some loose ends, Take-Two dissolved their publishing deal with Bloober Team for the Silent Hill 2 remake, and they opted to retain one smaller game, Moon Studios’ No Rest for the Wicked.
Studios and games that may still be connected to Private Division include Obsidian’s The Outer Worlds, Panache’s Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey, Piccolo Studios’ After Us, Evening Star’s Penny’s Big Breakaway, Wētā Workshop’s Tales of the Shire: A “The Lord of the Rings” Game, and the Game Freak title codenamed Project Bloom.
Zelnick had this to say about these decisions:
“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.
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.”
We do think Take-Two and Zelnick deserve some credit for venturing to take on the risk of publishing small games in the first place. Of course, even though these games are commonly labeled as ‘indie,’ the backing of a conglomerate as big as Take-Two means they aren’t really independent games in any meaningful way.
And ironic as it may seem, it’s precisely because they are such a big company, used to taking big risks and big returns, that they have chosen to end this initiative. We know that the money they lost from all the failed Private Division games put altogether doesn’t match up the millions they fumbled when they released Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition. It’s really not that a lot of these games failed, it’s that they prefer spending more, even if it means losing more.
We will allow you to decide for yourselves what to make of Take-Two’s actions in closing studios and laying off workers, and hiding that from the public. What we will say is we hope those people who are still in Private Division are under owners who will respect them better, and that everyone who Take Two had laid off will find placement back in the video game industry.
