thefncrow

Applied to Police State. PSN: thefncrow

From the details from the old agreement that came out in the Call of Duty lawsuit, it was 4 games and 4 major expansions. So, of the 8, we're coming up on Bungie fulfilling 2 of them.

The court documents in this case list 5 major games, but the table has Destiny 1-4 and "Comet 4", with "Comet" being the codename for these major off-year expansions like Taken King.

The old contract had some opt outs. One of them has passed (Activision could have shut this down after Destiny came out if it didn't sell 5m copies), and the next opt out comes after "Comet #2", meaning two major releases from now. That opt out lets Activision opt out of the contract for any reason at all.

Also, Bungie owned the Destiny IP under the old contract. The old contract has terms that makes Bungie hand it over to Activision if they fuck up (and considering the year delay that already happened, who knows if any new deal might have already done that). But the old contract specified that it belonged to Bungie.

EDIT: meant to edit post, somehow double posted.

@conmulligan: yep. There's one scene in Witcher 3 that really emphasizes this. Geralt and a woman are standing facing each other, camera pulled out to show them in full, both near the center of the shot. This is them just before they have sex.

The woman is totally naked. Geralt is still wearing boxers. It's fucking ludicrous.

They announced a price, and it's $100 for game and guitar.

The new Rock Band is talking about trying for compatibility with old instruments, but who really knows until they announce some more. My personal feeling is that I don't think they would have talked that much about it if they don't have something at least significantly in the works (like a dongle or something to make the old stuff work).

Why the recent focus is pretty simple. The two very visible mass shootings we've had, coupled with the latest one being targeted at rather young children, has awakened an urge to do something politically about the ridiculous level of violence in this country, something that had been just tolerable enough when it was just a constant stream of minor incidents and not moving up to mass shootings.

With the political wind changing, the NRA wants to take the focus off the proliferation of firearms, so they need a scapegoat, and video games are it. Things like Biden's comments aren't because Biden's been secretly biding his time waiting to strike at video games, but because the NRA is a big enough organization with enough clout that you can't just ignore whatever topic they want to demonize. It requires a response of some kind, and for anyone (including the ESA) to just outright dismiss the accusations is to make yourself look as extremist and out-of-touch as, well, the NRA.

@pw2566ch said:

@LordAndrew said:

@pw2566ch said:

I'm curious as to if Double Fine were to purchase their own games from this auction.

Double Fine already owns the rights to their games.

They don't own the rights to Costume Quest or Stacking. It was mentioned in one of the Giant Bombcasts.

From my understanding, Double Fine owns the IP to both Costume Quest and Stacking. What they were supposedly interested in from the THQ sale was to buy back the distribution rights that THQ had as the publisher for Costume Quest and Stacking on 360/PS3.

@jakob187 said:

$500,000 for Vigil? THAT'S A STEAL! Darksiders 1 and 2 BOTH sold harder than that. While Darksiders 2 wasn't ZOMFG BEST GAME EVAR, the game was competent and the team most likely learned from any mistakes made on it. To honestly believe that someone would buy HOMEFRONT for $500k and not AN ENTIRE FUCKING STUDIO WITH AN IP ATTACHED...that's just insanity to me.

When you make a bid on a studio, you have to factor in the cost of running the studio which you become responsible for. Vigil was an 80 person studio, last I heard, so before you make a bid, you have to factor in paying 80 people for however long it takes them to develop a title. Given that Vigil just released a title early this year and was early in the process on a new IP, that might be a solid 2 years of paying 80 salaries before it starts to return any money.

Now, you can cut positions at the studio once you own it, but if you cut too much, you might as well have not bought the studio in the first place since you pushed the talent out the door.

Homefront, as noted, was sold because Crytek was deep in development of Homefront 2. If complications arise with the Homefront IP as a result of THQ's bankruptcy, Crytek could be left with a mostly complete video game that either has to be substantially reworked into something new or just scrapped entirely. $500k to secure the rights and make sure that you have a package that you can now shop to a new publisher is a good deal for Crytek. Homefront doesn't come with a bunch of development studio salaries you have to pay. The only cost assumed in buying the Homefront IP was that Crytek was apparently still due a $1m payment for development costs (which gets written off because now Crytek owes Crytek).

@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.

@SkullcrusherMountain said:

@thefncrow said:

@Korwin:

No, the creditors are still better off under this. The real value of the Clearlake plan was apparently actually $50m, but even if you take it at $60m, they're still better off.

The way the Clearlake plan works is this:

Clearlake establishes NewTHQ, which Clearlake owns entirely. NewTHQ buys everything of worth from OldTHQ for $50m/60m. OldTHQ now sits around as an entity stripped of any worth aside from the $50m/60m they got from NewTHQ, and uses that money to pay out creditors and investors. No one who was owed a dime of OldTHQ gets any stake in NewTHQ at all.

The auction brought in $71.3m, and THQ estimates they have $29m in remaining assets, so right around $100m for creditors and investors to split. The Clearlake deal would have been the $50m/60m and not a dime more.

The plan was $60 PLUS $10 for creditors.

That's incorrect. The $10m was included in the $60m figure, and the $10m wasn't cash, it was a promissory note to pay them $10m in 7 years. The creditors basically regarded the promissory note as worthless, and so Clearlake dropped it from their offer and it became $50m.