Private Division is a publishing label of Take-Two Interactive that deals with funding and publishing independent video games. Some notable independent video games that were published through Private Division include Kerbal Space Program, The Outer Worlds, Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey, and Hades.
Private Division recently announced that it acquired the British video game developer Roll7, the studio behind the independent game OlliOlli. OlliOlli is a side-scrolling, skateboarding game that was originally released back in 2014 for the PlayStation Vita, and later became available on PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox One, and even the Nintendo Switch. OlliOlli had a sequel that was released the following year in 2015 called OlliOlli 2: Welcome to Olliwood.
Private Division recently announced the acquisition of OlliOlli's developer on a Twitter post earlier today welcoming the developers. Private Division also made a post to officially announce the news and went into further detail about the acquisition. Micahel Worosz, the Executive Vice President and head of Private Division, shared some words about the acquisition, saying the company is thrilled to "welcome Roll7 to the Private Division family."
Worosz expressed the publisher's excitement for the opportunity for Private Division to show the world Roll7's passion and talent for developing games with the upcoming release of OlliOlli World. The game is scheduled to release in late 2021, and Worosz said the game will release this winter during Take-Two’s fiscal fourth quarter, which ends on March 31, 2022. However, he didn't provide an exact release date for the game. Simon Bennett, the Co-CEO of Roll7, also shared some warm words about Roll7 joining with Private Division.
He said that joining the label has helped raise the creative bar for the development team as well as the scope for OlliOlli World. Bennett also said that joining Private Division will help Roll7 grow and achieve its ambitions to become a "pre-eminent video games developer." Along with developing OlliOlli World, the post mentions that Roll7 currently has other unannounced video game projects still in development. So the developer has more video games to come that fans of the game studio can look forward to when they're finally revealed.
However, this isn't the first deal that Private Division made with Roll7. Previously in 2020, Private Division made deals with several indie game studios, some of which gamers will be familiar with. The game studios included Roll7 along with Moon Studios, the developer behind Ori and the Will of the Wisps, and its sequel Ori and the Blind Forest. The second was the developer League of Geeks, the studio's first game was the fairy-tale board game Armello, which was well-received upon its initial release.
OlliOlli World is scheduled to release in late 2021 for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and the Xbox Series X/S.