Former Annapurna staff reportedly found new studio to rescue sold-off Private Division projects, including new Game Freak game

In a fairly exciting case of two major industry stories meeting in the middle, former members of downfallen indie publisher Annapurna Interactive have reportedly joined forces to take control of several game projects previously published by Take-Two Interactive’s label Private Division, which has itself been sold off amid layoffs. The game projects in question include the Kerbal Space Program series and an unannounced project from Pokémon developer Game Freak.

That’s from a new Bloomberg article (paywall), helpfully summarised by Game Developer. To give you the backstory here, Annapurna Interactive are a division of fancy-dan auteur-driven media company Annapurna Pictures, known for films like Zero Dark Thirty and American Hustle. Founded in 2016, the Interactive label are the publishers of such acclaimed smaller game projects as Kentucky Route Zero, Outer Wilds, Sayonara Wild Hearts, and Neon White. Notwithstanding the critical success of these projects, there have long been tensions between Annapurna Pictures leadership and the gaming division. The entire staff of Annapurna Interactive resigned in September 2024, after the failure of negotiations to spin the label off as a separate company.

Then, in November, Take-Two announced that they would sell Private Division, while also confirming the closure of OlliOlli World devs Roll7 and Kerbal Space Program 2 devs Intercept Games. Private Division are comparable to Annapurna Interactive in publishing “mid-tier” games like Rollerdrome and After Us, that have a particular combination of artsy-experimental and blockbuster polish – the broad idea being to enhance Take-Two’s prestige as a publisher of innovative work and establish revenue streams beyond the vast empires of Rockstar and 2K Games. Or at least, that’s my impression, based on years of preview events.

It’s the kind of venture that gets chopped when the old “economic headwinds” are a-blowing and investors aren’t seeing desired returns, even when the operation is making money. “The team of Private Division did a great job supporting independent developers and, almost to a one, every project they supported did well,” Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick observed back in November. “However, the scale of those projects was, candidly, on the smaller side, and we’re in the business of making great big hits.”

Which brings us to today. According to Bloomberg, a new, currently unnamed team of former Annapurna Interactive staff have struck a deal with private equity firm Haveli, the new owners of Private Division, to take control of several Private Division projects and franchises.

The deal doesn’t cover everything Private Division were working on at the time of their sale. For example, it doesn’t include two new projects from Yellow Brick Games and Bloober Team, which Private Division were to publish: Yellow Brick will self-publish their game, while Bloober’s deal with Private Division has been fully dissolved. As for what remains of Annapurna Interactive, Annapurna executives are now hiring staff so they can follow through on existing obligations.

I have a lot of love for Annapurna Interactive’s line-up, particularly The Outer Wilds, and am happy to see a few of the people involved with those projects striking up afresh under a different banner. I hope the former Private Division members who’ve lost their jobs as part of the sale have similar success elsewhere. I am also curious to hear about the new Game Freak game, though given Game Freak’s heavy association with Nintendo, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was exclusively for consoles.