It's not that we enjoy talking about THQ's miseries, though you'd be forgiven for thinking so, given the general volume of rather lousy news we've reported on the publisher in the last several months. Today's news probably isn't going to help matters, but we swear, we hate reporting on this. It's just that this stuff keeps happening.
Today's woeful news comes surrounding THQ's former Warhammer MMO, Dark Millennium. At one point not too long ago, industry fixture Kevin Dent proclaimed the game dead on twitter, which got THQ PR into a tizzy of denials, claiming the game was still in the works, though eventually conceding that the company was seeking a partner to help finance and publish the game.
Now Dent's proclamations of doom have been proven partially right, as the game has been shifted to a more traditional "premium" single- and multiplayer game. Dark Millennium, the MMO, is dead. Long live Dark Millennium, the single-player-focused adventure, apparently. The new version of Millennium will include online multiplayer, but it shall be decidedly less massive than previously intended.
As if that news weren't troubling enough, THQ decided to put a particularly unpleasant tasting cherry on top of this whole shit sundae by also announcing over a hundred layoffs, split between Vigil Games and Relic Entertainment. 79 were let go from Vigil, while 39 were laid off at Relic.
The layoffs were perhaps inevitable, given the shift in Dark Millennium's direction. Still, this is just the latest volley of layoffs surrounding THQ products in a year's span that has already seen several bouts of this. 240 employees were let go back in February, while last June THQ shuttered Kaos Studios, the team behind Homefront, altogether.
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