THQ Officially Dissolving as Bankruptcy Auction Yields Multiple Buyers [UPDATEDx2]

So the whole plan behind this was to end up making more money than the original hand-off was going to be as a whole... and they ended up making less.

Great job creditors at being greedy.

Who gets Deepak Chopra's Leela?

@Tandar1: Actually they made more.

@Pepsiman said:

@CornBREDX said:

Hmm... interesting news on Vigil (can read past comments for it but it pertains to this speculation) I don't want them devs to be out of a job, though. I mean, cool if Darksiders gets bought but here's hoping Vigil comes out of this alive. Yikes. I was thinking Nintendo would be a good fit as well, but they are not known for Mature games really (does metroid really count? Maybe.) and are oft not in the market for buying up other developers. Nintendo is extremely doubtful but would make sense.

That translation is pretty stupendously wonky in all honesty. Having read the original for myself, Inaba is mostly being pretty playful and is just surprised nobody else has snatched up Darksiders already more than anything. He's not speaking concretely and the underlying sentiment is more like, "Sure would be nice to pick it up on the cheap" more than, "Hey, I want to totally dig into this." Hideki Kamiya actually apparently sent a tweet out telling him to keep his mouth shut facetiously, so I wouldn't put much merit into that. Interesting hypothetical for sure, but that's at most what it is for the time being.

It does sound playful but the translation is fine. The tonal distinction you're making isn't present in the Japanese either. The translation also left out the 'You serious [that the DS IP went unsold]?' which makes him appear more enthusiastic about it rather than less.

EDIT: as for Kamiya, I can't find any tweet of his telling Inaba to keep quiet. He didn't even know what Darksiders was and in response to Darksiders questions he is now just pasting this.

EDIT2: Platinum CEO Minami's reaction to Inaba, basically 'Inaba, that mug, making pain-in-the-ass tweets again'. ATM he seems to be travelling with Inaba and JP Kellams, who tweeted about hiring Vigil employees, so no doubt it's come up in direct convo between them all.

Please don't let Vigil die :(

Really surprised about Vigil and Darksiders. Even if the last game didn't sell how they would have wanted, felt that there was a pretty good multimedia franchise established. Sucks, considering that the games they made were pretty good. No bids just seem odd. Maybe some key staff members have already left? I wonder now if someone buys THQ if they would get that IP too.

@Ett: Can they persuade them to do a RTS Shining Force game? *drools*

please SEGA, I love Relic's 40k games.... let them do more.....

EDIT: google searches seem to indicate they DONT own 40K. Well thats a bummer...

Wow, so Relic came incredibly close to going to Zenimax.

A day later and I still can't believe that Vigil got the shaft.

500k for a game licens isnt that much, but i still dont get why crytek went for homefront.

@DougCL said:

im shocked that Vince McMahon didnt snatch up the WWE games.

Vince angrily hammering out game code on a home computer and then snarling to everyone that it's the way it should be is an intriguing scenario.

Over the last few years I really started to love the releases put out by THQ, so I do find it a bit sad this happened. But its no real surprise. Still bums me out however.

@Nyhus: They are making a Homefront 2, makes sense so they don't have to make a homefront game

@Nyhus said:

500k for a game licens isnt that much, but i still dont get why crytek went for homefront.

Crytek had been contracted by THQ to make Homefront 2, and given that the game was announced a year and a half ago, that game is probably fairly close to completion and on schedule for release late this year or early next year. With THQ's implosion, who knows what would happen with the Homefront IP, which means Crytek's left with a game that's most of the way towards completion that they either have to substantially rework into a new product or just scrap entirely. By buying the Homefront IP, now they have all the rights secured. They can finish their game and go hunting for a new publisher.

I don't think anything is final yet. I just saw how close SEGA outbid Zenimax (shudder) for Reric. And the 40k license issue is still up in the air so we'll have to wait. It makes perfect sense, however, that GW would like to have one big happy SEGA family making all Warhammer games for them, especially since GW and Relic are on such good terms with the way they handled DoW.

Sega and CA have made some bad decisions over the years, but I remain hopeful about them buying Relic Ent.

500k for Homefront? So shitty ideas do sell

Thank god. No EA, I was getting worried.

@Gunslinger0130 said:

@Seedofpower said:

Thank god. No EA, I was getting worried.

EA getting Relic would have been better than SEGA, I know it's fun to shit on the big guys but at least they have the wallet to back large production costs. SEGA is going to ruin Company of Heroes.

I think it's possible SEGA may go under because of their own financial issues, but they have been serving the PC market with decent and even great strategy games for quite a while at this point, I think Company of Heroes is in safe hands in that regard.

If EA had gotten their hands on the franchise, I think the best case scenario we could've hoped for was another browser based free to play light-tower-defense strategy game like Lord of Ultima or C&C Tiberian Alliance (both are terrible, by the way), worst case they would just take the brand name and put it on yet another modern military shooter to try to dethrone Call of Duty.

So $71 millon compared to the $60 million sell to Clearlake.

major lol's at "Crytek has purchased the rights to the Homefront franchise for some reason."

i also can think of no reasons why anyone would buy homefront, thq should pay a company to take it

@Tolkienfanatic said:

A day later and I still can't believe that Vigil got the shaft.

Same, i would have thought Square-enix, the current owners of the Legacy of Kain series would have appreciated Darksiders, or maybe even 2nd party deal with Nintendo. Now our only hope rests with Platinum who may or may not have the cash to purchase them.

Damn, I guess I really nailed it (if confirmed) when I originally posted about Take-Two being a good fit for picking up the rights for future WWE games.

Kind of disappointing to hear about a different team continuing the development for the next Saints Row.

@Gunslinger0130 said:

@Seedofpower said:

Thank god. No EA, I was getting worried.

EA getting Relic would have been better than SEGA, I know it's fun to shit on the big guys but at least they have the wallet to back large production costs. SEGA is going to ruin Company of Heroes.

I guess you haven't been paying attention to SEGA's PC output over the last few years.

You can make the argument that in the end cold-blooded capitalism will destroy everything we love, but c'mon. It’s different when it’s a woman, this is over the line, and Crytek should have known better.

That's a shame...

@Owlhead said:

please SEGA, I love Relic's 40k games.... let them do more.....

EDIT: google searches seem to indicate they DONT own 40K. Well thats a bummer...

SEGA, did get the Warhammer fantasy license with Creative Assembly so this doesn't seem like a long shot that they can get the 40k license as well.

EDIT: From my own searching it seeme that SEGA DID get the 40k license along with Relic.

So long as the same guys who made Saints Row The Third are making the next one, I'm okay with this!

@Rotnac said:

Damn, I guess I really nailed it (if confirmed) when I originally posted about Take-Two being a good fit for picking up the rights for future WWE games.

Kind of disappointing to hear about a different team continuing the development for the next Saints Row.

you are misunderstanding the quote. Deep Silver is a publishing firm, not a development firm. There is no indication of a different team for Saint Row, just that from now on Deep Silver will be publishing the games. I doubt they would aquire Volition then tell them to fuck off.

Sega getting Relic makes sense, especially since about the only thing that Sega does well at this point is anything coming out of Creative Assembly. Now that Creative Assembly has the Warhammer fantasy license...and Relic is surely carrying over the 40K license, it puts Warhammer firmly at Sega overall.

Koch picking up Metro makes sense, given the origins of the franchise in general as well as Koch being the guys that gave us something like Dead Island. Saints Row is kind of a crazy thing, though, and hopefully they don't fuck it up. Hopefully they will also revive Red Faction.

2K picking up WWE makes sense as well, and maybe it'll be just the thing needed to revive that franchise into something far more worthwhile. There are plenty of studios in their sports sector that could work wonders on animation and systems (MLB and NBA teams perhaps?).

South Park at Ubisoft is a little odd as well, but oh well. Hopefully it will not delay the release of that game, and maybe it'll give a good working relationship with both the franchise as well as Obsidian?

Crytek getting Homefront is kind of a no-brainer. I'm wondering if they will scrap everything that is done right now and rebuild it or if they will just continue building on what is already done.

Vigil not going anywhere REALLY worries me, especially after Joe M. just left the studio. I'm hoping that someone can pick up the studio (and the Darksiders franchise) and really get that thing focused and back to the glory of the first game. I should probably play more of Darksiders 2 at some point. It's just...so...boring.

EA and Activision...as well as Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo... Where the hell were they? Shit, Darksiders as a first party franchise could do some wonders for someone I think. Wasn't Vigil also working on some kind of 40K ARPG? That would be neat to see revamped into something else. Seems like those publishers had a lot of missed opportunities.

"Crytek has purchased the rights to the Homefront franchise for some reason."

I nominate this for the Pulitzer Prize in the category of Snark.

I don't really unstand what Koch buying Metro and Saints row means for those two franchises but here's hoping they don't screw it up.

@DrQuags said:

"Crytek has purchased the rights to the Homefront franchise for some reason."

I nominate this for the Pulitzer Prize in the category of Snark.

Hey, if anyone could turn Homefront into a halfway decent game then it would be Crytek. I just hope the scrap any work that's already been done and start from scratch.

@wsowen02 said:

Maybe now Desilets can fix Assassin's Creed

This is the best post on this citadel. But I doubt it, AC3 made too much money for Ubisoft to try and fix it.

Rest in peace, THQ. I wonder whether Koch Media will start a few dev teams for Metro and Saints Row or if they'll mix them in with Deep Silver or something.

If the mixing happens, I'll be afraid.

If not, it'll be cool.

What about the developer of Metro, 4A Games? Did they go to Koch Media as well? Or just the Metro game license?

Haha. Awww. Cleaning my registry...

@jakob187 said:

(MLB and NBA teams perhaps?).

NBA team only, the MLB 2K series has been complete shit for the past half decade.

I'm glad relic went to sega, who seem to do just fine with the creative assembly. I'm suprised by how much they sold for compared to some of the other divisions.

South Park could of been picked up by worse developers than ubisoft also.

As far as koch media, i have no freaking clue what their deal is, but i guess it isn't too worrying to me. I never really got into the saints row series and the last game i enjoyed from volition was the amazing red faction guerilla. Red faction being already basically a dead IP.

All in all this doesn't seem a bad result as far as i'm concerned, the main fear was that relic wouldn't find a good home.

@a5ehren: I worked for Koch / DeepSilver (which was JoWoods budget div at one time) / Dreamcatcher / The Adventure Company...

....Deep Silver games were terrible. at our Toronto office we would literally laugh our asses off when the sales guys would come back from Wal-Mart, Target etc explaining how they would try and flog those budget games.

It was brutal.

Glad Relic and Volition keep on living.

The biggest concern now is what the hell is going to happen to my Darksiders 3/4 :/

@Rincewind said:

Sega is going to ruin COH

I still can't wrap my mind around that myself. My pipe dream would be to see Sega AM2 be involved with a COH2 expansion with the same maniacal OCD energy they put in a VF.

I thought they were supposed to make more then 65M now, guess that didnt make much of a difference.

@mosdef said:

@Rincewind said:

Sega is going to ruin COH

I still can't wrap my mind around that myself. My pipe dream would be to see Sega AM2 be involved with a COH2 expansion with the same maniacal OCD energy they put in a VF.

Keep in mind that COH2 is almost done by now so at least that one is bound to be similar in quality to COH and it's expansions. Eitherway I'd love to see what creative assembly could do with that IP.

Best wishes to all of the people affected by the bankruptcy. Hopefully the remaining development teams find good publishers (production-wise, I mean).