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Report: AT&T looking to sell Warner Bros games arm

Report: AT&T looking to sell Warner Bros games arm

American telecoms giant AT&T is reportedly trying to sell its Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment games division.

That's according to CNBC, which claims that the business is up for sale for around $4bn. Furthermore, fellow US giants Take-Two, EA and Activision Blizzard have apparently expressed an interest in buying WBIE.

Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment comes with 15 games studios, including Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor maker Monolith Productions, NetherRealm of Mortal Kombat fame, Rocksteady – best known for the Batman: Arkham series – and Traveller's Tales, who has made myriad LEGO games since 2005.

Many of these studios work on titles that are based on Warner Bros IP, such as Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, but WBIE does also own the likes of Mortal Kombat. The company also has a partnership with Hitman creator IO Interactive for a "new universe."

Warner Bros' games tend to perform pretty well and cover a large swathe of addressable markets, from bloody adult fighting games, to colourful LEGO titles for kids.

As such, $4bn seems like a rather low valuation for such a lucrative offering.

The company was reportedly set to reveal new Batman and Harry Potter games at E3 this year, though these haven't seen the light of day after the LA trade show was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.


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PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.