After months of speculation, Embracer Group has finally sold Gearbox Software at a price tag of $460 million and the buyer happens to be Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc.The rumors of Embracer selling Gearbox have persisted since the start of 2023 as the company's leadership continue to maintain plans for contraction as it struggles with mounting debt. Take-Two being the buyer of Gearbox shouldn't come as too much of a surprise considering they have published every single Borderlands game since the start of the series. However, the sale comes with a major catch. Take-Two's purchase is only netting them Gearbox Software, Gearbox Montreal, and Gearbox Studio Quebec and the IPs associated with those outfits which include, but are not limited to, Borderlands, Homeworld, Risk of Rain, Brothers in Arms, and Duke Nukem. Oh, and Take-Two have confirmed that Randy Pitchford will remain as the CEO of Gearbox.

It's important to note that unlike its third party competitors like EA or Ubisoft, Take-Two is structured as a gaming holding company and doesn't itself engage in internal development. They instead primarily rely on their two publishing labels, Rockstar Games and 2K to operate game studios that they own. They also have a "third division," Private Division, which operates to gain publishing rights to mid-budget titles and indie games, and a fourth division called T2 Mobile Games/Socialpoint which does mobile games. Ken Levine's Ghost Story is maybe the company's fifth division, but that delineation is not very clear. Gearbox will be tied to the 2K division, which was already tasked with maintaining the publishing for the Borderlands IP, and is best known for the NBA 2K games, but also manages Firaxis as well as Hangar 13.

Embracer is retaining Gearbox Publishing San Francisco and some of Gearbox's subsidiaries like Cryptic Studios, Lost Boys Interactive, and Captured Dimension. This means that the rights to Remnant, Neverwinter Online, Star Trek Online, and Hyper Light Breaker will remain with Embracer. Likewise, the television adaption of Borderlands will not be impacted by this deal and Take-Two has indicated that it will not be completed until the first quarter of Take-Two's 2025 fiscal year.

It is INCREDIBLY important to note that while $460 million is a large sum of money, Embracer paid $1.3 billion to buy all of Gearbox Interactive in 2021. Even if the company's main objective is to reduce its debt, that is a major loss and this sale coincides with Embracer selling Saber Interactive and a number of associated studios to Saber to the tune of ~$250 million and staffing layoffs at Edios-Montreal as well as Lost Boys Interactive. Embracer already missed its Q3 targets and these moves are likely not the end of its attempts s to reduce debt.

I'm just glad that we're seeing further consolidation in the gaming space. There hasn't been enough of that.

Who knows what ramifications this will have in the long run but Embracer Group continues to try to salvage itself by undoing everything it has done for the last decade or so and losing a ton of money in the process. Big brained stuff here, glad they kept the CEO on to steer this ship.

Maybe Borderlands will start to operate under the 2K sports model and every couple years the servers will shut down and you'll lose all your guns. Or you can buy gun packs as trading cards. There are already microtransactions in those games but they can ALWAYS be more predatory!

Saw this coming when they just kept buying stuff, but still depressing to watch.

*flexes business guns* "We only lost a cool 800 million on this deal. Could be worse I guess. Now about that bonus..."

I mean... it's not a complete loss if they retained some of the studios and publishing rights. Is any of that stuff going to be worth 800 million? Probably not. But I think we're all forgetting to take into account the value of not having Randy Pitchford around. Easily worth 800 million.

I mean, they do have a movie coming out.

Fuck.