After a financially tumultuous year, it looks like Embracer Group is preparing to sell Borderlands developer Gearbox Entertainment. Rumors of a potential sale first emerged late last year, and according to a new report, a deal is currently being finalized.

Borderlands boss Randy Pitchford responds to Gearbox sale report

An update on Gearbox’s status was provided by Kotaku. The website’s sources claim that studio CEO Randy Pitchford held a town hall earlier this week, during which he said that a decision was made regarding Gearbox’s future. Kotaku claims to have heard that a sale is currently being finalized. However, it’s not known at present who the buyer is.

In response to Kotaku’s request for comment, Pitchford released somewhat of an odd statement, expressing his delight over his company being the subject of rumors and speculations. “I’m delighted that what we might be up to is interesting enough to people that you want to make a story about us for your readers,” he said. “I’m honored and humbled that our company is a topic of rumor, speculation, and discussion.”

Pitchford added Gearbox will be “thrilled” to reveal what’s next when it has some news to share.

Elsewhere, Embracer Group is also selling Saber Interactive.

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Gearbox Publishing is the latest company that has undergone layoffs following parent company Embracer Group‘s restructuring. Established in 2015, Gearbox Publishing is the publishing arm of the Borderlands studio.

Gearbox Publishing most recently released Remnant 2

Gearbox Entertainment was acquired by Embracer Group in a $1.3 billion deal back in 2021. Most recently, the company published Gunfire Games’ acclaimed shooter RPG Remnant 2. Gearbox Publishing is also behind PS5 exclusive Godfall (Counterplay Games) and People Can Fly’s Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition.

GameDeveloper spotted LinkedIn posts from former employees confirming the layoffs. According to localization specialist Allan Jacquemart, no one saw the layoffs coming and he was one of many who started working at the company as recently as June, only to be laid off at the end of the probation period. “We were simply victims of the [Embracer] group’s restructuring,” Jacquemart wrote.

Embracer has been shedding its properties as fast as it acquired them. Just yesterday, it announced the immediate closure of Saints Row and Red Faction developer Volition, which had been in operation for 30 years. The group has been canceling projects and undergoing restructuring since June.

For now, Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics has been marked safe from the cuts.

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Borderlands developer Gearbox Software is apparently working on a new AAA IP with the intention of making it “family friendly.” That’s according to a number of job descriptions that have popped up on Gearbox’s website, some of which also hint at a co-op and first-person game.

Gearbox’s new IP will be a departure from Borderlands

As spotted by folks over at VeryAli Gaming, Gearbox is looking for a lead producer with a “passion for family friendly, cooperative, games.” Interestingly, the job ad mentions Unreal Engine 4, which suggests that Gearbox has yet to pivot to UE5.

The mystery project will be a “large-scale” AAA game, and looking at the job description for a senior UI programmer, we learn that it may be played from a first-person perspective as Gearbox is specifically looking for someone with experience designing first-person games.

Other open job ads found by VeryAli Gaming also mention crafting a “compelling and replayable” game with “engaging” enemies and combat. The job descriptions also mention “progression-related game loops” and monetization strategies, suggesting that the game will have RPG and live service elements.

Gearbox has yet to announce its next project. As of 2021, the company is a subsidiary of Embracer Group.

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Geoff Keighley took to Twitter on Thursday to reveal the Summer Game Fest 2023 partners. The lineup includes some major studios and companies that will all showcase their games this year.

What game publishers will be at Summer Game Fest 2023?

Included in the Summer Game Fest 2023 partners announcement from Keighley are companies like Electronic Arts, Disney, Epic, Gearbox, Capcom, Annapurna, Square Enix, Sega, Xbox, and more.

Keighley also announced that public tickets for the event were available to buy now, with tickets up at Ticketmaster now for $35. The event will take place at the YouTube Theater in Inglewood, California, on June 8, 2023.

The full list of the companies appearing at Summer Game Fest this year are as follows:

• Activision
• Amazon Games
• Annapurna
• Bandai Namco
• Behaviour
• Capcom
• CD Projekt Red
• Devolver
• Digital Extremes
• Disney
• EA
• Epic Games
• Focus
• Gearbox Publishing
• Grinding Gear Games
• hoyoverse
• Kabam, Larian
• Level Infinite
• Magic the Gathering
• Neowiz
• Netflix
• Nexon
• Niantic
• North Beach Games
• Samsung Gaming Hub
• Second Dinner
• Sega
• Paradox
• Pearl Abyss
• Phoenix Labs
• Plaion
• PlayStation
• Pocket Pair
• Razer
• Smilegate
• Square Enix
• Stema
• Techland
• Tribeca Festival
• Ubisoft
• Warner Bros. Games
• Xbox

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The Saints Row developer, Volition, has been moved from Deep Silver to Gearbox Entertainment following the game’s poor reception. The aim of the internal transfer, the first for parent company Embracer Group, is to use the expertise of Gearbox to “create future success at Volition” both with Saints Row and future games.

Saints Row will be moved to Gearbox

Moving forward, the Saints Row developer will be moved from its current role as a Deep Silver studio to a new role within Gearbox Entertainment’s group. This is because Gearbox “has all the tools, including an experienced management team in the US, to create future success at Volition.” This will include future DLC, such as that included within the game’s Expansion Pass, as well as future games from the studio.

Saints Row was released in August to a polarizing reception, something with which Embracer’s CEO Lars Wingefors was not happy. Volition has since been “working hard to improve the player experience” with updates and free DLC, including the Bright Future update that included more than 200 bug fixes and gameplay improvements like PS5 Haptic Feedback. Despite this, the game has not met “the full expectations” of the management team, Embracer said in their latest earnings report.

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The Borderlands movie may well have attracted quite a list of talented actors for its cast of Vault Hunters, villains, and supporting characters, but it seems like Borderlands 3 nearly had a movie star of its own. Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford revealed one of the game’s characters had been designed with the intention of casting Danny DeVito as its voice actor, but things didn’t work out as planned.

Typhon DeLeon is a Borderlands 3 NPC that calls himself the first Vault Hunter after he set off for better things than following his family into turd farming. Many fans of the game have compared the character to DeVito previously but their similarities had never been confirmed before today. Apparently a chance meeting between Pitchford and DeVito resulted in the latter stating his wish to voice a character in one of Gearbox’s games.

While the team were creating the character, they wanted someone who was “infamous and imagined to be the perfect super hero in stature and appearance.” Those who have played the game will realize DeLeon is not even remotely like this, mainly because Pitchford instead wanted “half-myth and half reality,” one that turned out to be “unassuming, short, and rough around the edges.” As the character was developed further, he was formed with DeVito in mind as the actor.

When it came to casting the character, discussions began with DeVito but “Danny’s peeps kept ghosting” them. Another reason for giving up on the idea was that the character’s table reader, Motion Graphics Designer Mike Cosner, was “so great at the role” when the team were trying out the character’s lines and had “nailed” the temporary voiceover recordings. As such, Cosner ended up cast as the character’s official voice actor.

You can read Pitchford’s full Twitter thread below:

I got introduced to Danny DeVito during my time there and we went back to his trailer and were talking shop by his trailer between shots. We talked about entertainment and videogames and he said he would love to do a character in one of our games.

— Randy Pitchford (@DuvalMagic) September 13, 2021

DeLeon isn’t one of the characters set to make an appearance in the Borderlands movie, so we’re not going to see DeVito in the world of Pandora just yet. The movie will release at some point next year.

[Source: Twitter]

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Gearbox’s Borderlands spinoff/not-spinoff Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands got its first gameplay presentation during today’s PlayStation Showcase. It also revealed the release date of March 25, 2022.

Take a look at the full gameplay reveal below:

The Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands gameplay reveals a game that clearly takes a bunch of inspiration from Borderlands, but also deviates in some very important ways. Tina narrates the new trailer, with her signature sassy style. Yes, it features a whole bunch of guns in a fantasy RPG, but you can also create your own character, use magic, go into third person, and do a variety of other new things. And there will be plenty of loot. With the game coming soon, we’re likely to hear a lot more about it in the next few months in the approach to release.

First announced in June at E3 this year, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands was shown in a brief cinematic trailer, showing the concept for the high-fantasy looter shooter, inspired by Tiny Tina’s favorite tabletop RPG, Bunkers and Badasses. While it utilizes Tiny Tina from the Borderlands property (and the return of the diamond-encrusted Butt Stallion), that’s virtually where all connections to Borderlands end. Wonderlands is meant to be its own franchise, with a decidedly different approach. Even if there’s a teaser of an orc Mister Torgue.

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is coming March 25, 2022 to PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC.

If you missed the PlayStation Showcase, you can watch the 40 minute presentation again here. We’ll also have a full recap of every announcement from the show.

Now that we’ve seen Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands gameplay, are you excited for the direction Gearbox is taking with the it?

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After taking a year off, E3 2021 is upon us with a variety of conferences, streams, and showcases from exhibitors to announce exciting things, give us updates on games, and generally hype and surprise us. The Gearbox E3 Showcase is set to be a shorter show, but should provide plenty of exciting updates from the developer about games like Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, Borderlands updates (both on the game and the movie), and probably a few other surprises too.

The show begins at 2pm Pacific/5pm Eastern, and is only expected to last around 30 minutes.

You can watch the Gearbox E3 Showcase live stream in the embedded video below:

If the embedded video isn’t working, you should be able to find the stream at one of the links below.

• Gearbox E3 Showcase Twitch Stream (Via E3)
• Gearbox E3 Showcase Youtube Live Stream (via E3)

After the acquisition by Embracer earlier this year, we’re unsure what to expect from this showcase. Borderlands (and now Wonderlands) is Gearbox’s biggest franchise, but the studio has touted new IPs that have been rattling around, and they’ve made a variety of other games in the past, so there could be some surprises along the way. Definitely expect Wonderlands to headline the show, potential updates on future Borderlands 3 content, and an update (maybe even a sneak peek?) of the upcoming Borderlands movie. Past that, it’s anybody’s guess as to what Gearbox will be presenting, though we don’t expect the developer/publisher to lean on Borderlands as a crutch forever. Holding their own entire showcase is a pretty big hint that they want to position themselves as something more than a single game/franchise studio.

Check out our Summer Season Pass event hub for all of the latest entertainment news throughout the summer, including everything announced and revealed at Summer Game Fest and E3 2021.

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Leaked ahead of the Summer Game Fest Kickoff event, Gearbox and 2K announced Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, the Borderlands spinoff inspired by the Bunkers and Badasses DLC which saw Tiny Tina as the dungeon master of an in-universe Dungeons and Dragons-style roleplaying game. Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is not a Borderlands game, but Borderlands players will find plenty to love.

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands will feature a whole new spellcasting system as well as the ability to create your own custom character instead of being a predetermined character. It retains that traditional Gearbox/Borderlands-style “not quite cel-shaded” art style, albeit updated with it’s own particular style for Wonderlands.

You can check out the reveal trailer below, which mixes guns with fantasy in a unique new way. It promises to have the same irreverent and goofy dark humor of the Borderlands series.

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands will star Andy Samberg, Will Arnett, Wanda Sykes, Ashely Burke returning as Tiny Tina, and of course the mystical Butt Stallion. We don’t yet know what roles each of these characters will play. Little else is known about the game right now. It’s also unknown if this is the “big one” that Randy Pitchford was talking about the company working on. With it technically not being a Borderlands game, it’s expected the company is also still hard at work on additional Borderlands games and content too.

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is coming early 2022 to PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC, with more details to be revealed later this year.

Check out our Summer Season Pass event hub for all of the latest entertainment news throughout the summer, including everything announced and revealed at Summer Game Fest and E3 2021.

Roll for initiative down to the comments below to let us know what you think of Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands.

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Five days ago we got to see a provisional E3 2021 schedule although we were also told things were subject to change. The broadcast schedule has now been updated and finalised, detailing all of the shows players can tune into throughout the four day all-digital show. Capcom has also revealed some of the games we’ll see during its showcase on July 14.

E3 2021 will begin at 10am PT on June 12 and will run until the evening of June 15. The full broadcast schedule can be seen below with all times in PT.

E3 2021 Broadcast Schedule

*All times in Pacific.

Saturday, June 12

• 10 am – Broadcast Pre-Show
• 11 am – Ubisoft Forward Pre-Show
• 12 pm – Ubisoft Forward
• 2 pm – Gearbox E3 Showcase
• 2:45 pm – GamesBeat Session

Sunday, June 13

• 8:45 am – Broadcast Pre-Show
• 9:30 am – 24 Entertainment’s NARAKA: BLADEPOINT
• 10 am – Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase
• 12:15 pm – SQUARE ENIX
• 2 pm – Warner Bros. Games’ Back 4 Blood
• 2:30 pm – PC Gaming Show
• 4 pm – Future Games Show

Monday, June 14

• 8 am – Broadcast Pre-Show
• 9 am – Verizon
• 9:45 am – Intellivision
• 10:15 am – Take-Two Interactive Panel
• 11:10 am – Mythical Games
• 12 pm – Indie Showcase
• 12:30 pm – Freedom Games
• 1 pm – VENN
• 2:30 pm – Capcom
• 3 pm – Razer

Tuesday, June 15

• 8 am – Broadcast Pre-Show
• 9 am – Nintendo’s Nintendo Direct and Nintendo Treehouse: Live
• 2:25 pm – BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Inc.
• 3:30 pm – Yooreka Studio
• 3:35 pm – GameSpot Play For All Showcase
• 4:45 pm – Official E3 2021 Awards Show

Ubisoft had already confirmed some big titles appearing during Ubisoft Forward, while Warner Bros. will only be showing Back 4 Blood. Gearbox will be revealing a brand new title rumored to be called Wonderlands, and there are likely to be many more announcements during the show. Capcom has confirmed they will be bringing The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, Monster Hunter Stories 2, Monster Hunter Rise, and Resident Evil Village to their show, although whether we’ll see any other announcements during the 30 minute showcase remains to be seen. It’s expected that Resident Evil Village will be DLC expansions for the game, similar to the expansions the last game got.

Geoff Keighley’s separate Summer Game Fest event will begin a couple of days earlier on Thursday, June 10. They’ve promised a reveal of Season Four for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and Warzone, part of more than 30 game announcements. Koch Media will also have a big announcement of their own.

[Source: Twitter (1, 2)]

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