Borderlands goes with Gearbox, Remnant stays with Embracer.
Logo for Gearbox Entertainment.

Back in the far off time of 2021, Embracer Group purchased Gearbox Entertainment for $1.3 billion. On March 28, 2024, Embracer Group announced that they have sold off Gearbox Entertainment to Take-Two Interactive for $460 million. The acquisition by Take-Two is expected to be complete by the end of June.

Not all of Gearbox Entertainment is going to Take-Two, however. Embracer is holding on to the San Francisco based Gearbox Publishing. They are also retaining the rights to the Remnant franchise, Hyper Light Breaker, Cryptic Studios, Neverwinter Online, Star Trek Online, and the now former Gearbox support studios of Lost Boys Interactive and Captured Dimensions.

Gearbox Publishing has had to lay off an undisclosed number of employees that were "not tied to the development" of Gearbox titles. The layoffs have impacted areas such as marketing, communications, and other areas of the company.

Gearbox Publishing will be renamed once this deal is finalized.

Though Take-Two won't get Gearbox Publishing, it does obtain the rights to the Borderlands franchise including the spinoff of Tiny Tina's Wonderlands. Take-Two will also now own the rights to games such as Homeworld, Risk of Rain, Brothers in Arms, and Duke Nukem. Take-Two will fully own the Texas-based Gearbox Software, Gearbox Montreal, and Gearbox Studio Quebec.

As with nearly everything related to Gearbox, it's now time to hear from Randy Pitchford.

As a significant long-term Embracer Group shareholder, I believe in the strategy for the Embracer Group going forward and am completely convinced that this transaction is the best possible scenario and an obvious net positive arrangement for Embracer Group, for Take-Two and, of course, for Gearbox Entertainment. My primary interest is always Gearbox, including our talent and our customers. I want to personally ensure fans of our games that this arrangement will ensure that the experiences we have in development at Gearbox will be the best it can possibly be.
An interesting little snippet of information that came from today's announcement is that a new Borderlands game is "in active development." Whether this means it's Borderlands 5 or another spin-off title remains to be seen. If you need a Borderlands fix before this next game, there is always the upcoming film set for an August 9th release.