Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment is reportedly no longer for sale, which means the gaming rights to IP like Batman, Mortal Kombat, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, Suicide Squad, and LEGO are staying with the gaming division of AT&T, as well as WB Games‘ studios, including Rocksteady, NetherRealm Studios, and TT Games. The report comes a few months after initial reports claimed AT&T was looking to offload WB Games and license some of its IP in an attempt to chip away at its massive debt. At the time, it was believed, Xbox, EA, Activision, and Take-Two Interactive were all interested in what was reported to be a deal worth $2-4 billion.
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The report comes way of Bloomberg, which claims AT&T has removed Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment from the list of its noncore assets for sale, deciding that the part of the company is simply too valuable to offload right now. In other words, while it seemed AT&T was possibly interested at one point, it now belives this part of it is not for sale.
As Bloomberg notes, the decision to 180 on the sale comes among turnover at the top of AT&T food chain, which included John Stankey taking over the role of COO from Randall Stephenson.
At the moment of publishing, AT&T has not commented on this latest report, and it’s unlikely it will. After all, it didn’t comment on the initial reports, nor did any of the companies linked to the acquisition. That said, if any more information is provided — official or unofficial — we will be sure to update this post with said information.
Among the companies linked, it was believed Xbox was possibly the most interested and in somewhat advanced talks on striking a deal. However, it looks like these talks ultimately went nowhere.
This news comes on the back of two massive game reveals for the company last month: Gotham Knights and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, both of which attracted a ton of attention and generated considerable hype.
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