Gearbox Entertainment is no longer part of Embracer Group. As expected, Randy Pitchford’s house immediately found a buyer: Take Two Interactivewhich seized it for 460 million dollars, a sum that will be paid in full with the issue of new shares.
With the sale, Take-Two Interactive will receive Gearbox Software, Gearbox Montreal and Gearbox Studio Quebec, as well as all of the studio’s intellectual properties. So the publisher of the GTA series will add to his portfolio BorderlandsTiny Tina’s Wonderlands, Risk of Rain, Brothers in Arms, Duke Nukem and Homeworld.
New games in development
As part of the announcement, it was also revealed that Gearbox has new games in the Borderlands and Homeworld series in development (it’s unclear whether the reference is to Homeworld 3, arriving in the next few months).
Embracer will maintain Gearbox Publishing San Francisco, which will be renamed prior to the final closing of the deal. In addition to Gearbox’s publishing label, Embracer will hold Cryptic Studios and Lost Boys Interactive, the latter creator of Neverwinter Online and Star Trek Online.
Lars Wingefors, the CEO of Embracer Group, said that the divestment in Gearbox is essential to project the multinational into the future and reduce operating debt (by a figure between 300 and 330 million dollars), improving cash flow. According to what he stated, various options were evaluated for Gearbox, but evidently Take-Two’s offer was the most convincing and convenient.
Satisfaction also for Strauss Zelnick, the CEO of Take-Two, who expressed his company’s satisfaction with the acquisition of a historic studio and franchise of the level of Borderlands. It should be noted that the publisher of the Borderlands series so far has been 2K, Take-Two’s label. So the group has already had a deep collaboration with Gearbox in the recent past.
Gearbox will continue to be managed by Randy Pitchford, the founder, who was also relieved of the sale. Rumors about the fate of Gearbox have been circulating since last year, considering the prestige of the studio and its portfolio of intellectual properties. Furthermore, in February it emerged that it would be sold in March 2024 and so it was.
