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Posts Tagged ‘THQ’

patrice_desilets_ac

Wow, this has just become increasingly messy over the years. First, some background: Patrice Désilets is the creator and designer behind the Assassin’s Creed series – you know, Ubisoft’s most successful and lucrative IP to date. In 2010, Désilets left Ubisoft and at the time it was believed he did so because he wasn’t happy with the direction the AC franchise was heading – you know, the whole annualised releases thing. Désilets departed Ubisoft Montréal and ended up working at THQ Montréal.

During his time at THQ Montréal, Désilets was working on two games that had working titles of 1666 and Underdog. Very little is known about these games, but you can guess what happened next: THQ imploded and the now dead publisher began offloading studios and IPs. Ubisoft acquired THQ Montréal along with 170 members of its staff and all the games it was working on – yes, including Désilets and his two new games 1666 and Underdog. It must have been a slightly awkward “homecoming”. Regardless, there was no concrete evidence on whether Désilets would slot back into Assassin’s Creed development or if he would continue work on his other two games.

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darksiders_war

The remainder of THQ’s intellectual properties have been purchased by publisher Nordic Games. The Swedish company is known for bringing Alan Wake to the PC as well as Painkiller: Resurrection. You might also know of them via their occasional publishing label of JoWood Entertainment.

For $4.9 million, Nordic walked away with the Darksiders IP as well as “Red Faction, MX vs ATV, Other Owned Software (includes Destroy all Humans!, Summoner and more), and Other Licensed Software (includes Marvel Super Hero Squad, Supreme Commander and more).”

Shortly after the purchase was made public, Nordic Games started a new forum asking fans for feedback on what they would like to see happen to the various IPs. One “fan” to respond to the Darksiders thread was Ryan Stefanelli, the principal designer for Darksiders and co-founder of  the series’ original developers Vigil Games. Awkward…

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dawn_of_war_2

Relic held the license from Games Workshop to develop the incredibly good Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War series of RTS games. That deal was alive and kicking when Relic was still owned by THQ; they were busy making Dawn of War 3 and at one point it was due for release sometime between August 2012 and February 2013. Now that THQ is dead, and Relic is owned by Sega, the Dawn of War license agreement has kind of disappeared.

When Sega acquired Relic, they also acquired IPs that Relic had worked on, namely Company of Heroes. When pressed for comment about the Dawn of War IP, Sega kept quiet and Relic’s game director Quinn Duffy maintains that he is “still a bit fuzzy on that”. Despite this apparent AWOL state that Dawn of War finds itself in, Duffy sounds adamant that Relic will be given the green light by Games Workshop once again.

Dawn of War, because it’s a license and it’s owned by Games Workshop, they have the opportunity to work that license with whoever they want,” he told Eurogamer. “I would hope it would be us again. We had a great working relationship with Games Workshop.”

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homeworld_screenshot_2

About three months ago, this tiny software development company called teamPixel, announced to the world that they were going to save the Homeworld IP. Homeworld, of course, was one of the IPs in jeopardy during the whole THQ meltdown. Software company teamPixel aimed to attend the specified auction during which Homeworld was put up for grabs, and they used crowdsourcing websites IndieGoGo and Kickstarter to accumulate bidding funds.

That auction has now come and gone; it ended on 15 April. Unfortunately for the tiny company, teamPixel didn’t manage to acquire Homeworld. They were outbid. “While we reached qualified bidder status for the bankruptcy auction,” they wrote in an update on Kickstarter, “we were unable to raise the necessary funds to remain competitive against the other parties at the auction.”

The question now remains: who owns Homeworld? The auction was a success so the RTS IP has definitely found a new home with somebody. We’ll find out around the middle of May, once all transfers and deals from this mid-April auction have been finalised. As for teamPixel, they’re moving forward with development of their own space-based RTS game, which will obviously be heavily influenced by Homeworld.

Source: Kickstarter
Via: Polygon

darksiders_ii_artwork

We’ve just received a press release from local THQ distributor SterKinekor Entertainment notifying us that all THQ games distribution has been put “on hold”. This shouldn’t come as a surprise considering the recent collapse of THQ and the auctioning off of their major intellectual properties to rival publishers.

Many of the more popular THQ games are now owned by other companies, such as Koch Media taking over the Saints Row franchise and the Metro franchise. Distribution companies all over the world might not necessarily have the rights to distribute the games made by some of the publishers who purchased THQ assets. For example: Ubisoft recently purchased THQ IPs, but SterKinekor doesn’t have the rights to distribute Ubisoft games in South Africa.

It’s all a little tumultuous at the moment but it’ll be interesting to see if previous THQ games will be repackaged and republished by their new owners. You can read the brief press release after the jump. Also, if you were holding off on picking up some THQ games, then you might want to do that sooner rather than later because it doesn’t sound like any new stock will be arriving in our country.

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vigil_logo

Last week, when the decomposing corpse of THQ was hacked up into bite-sized pieces and thrown into the gaping maws of rival publishers, two extraordinary things happened. The first is that Crytek paid actual money in order to become the new owners of Homefront. Granted it was the cheapest sale during the auction but still, this is Homefront we’re talking about here.

The second extraordinary thing is that nobody wanted to buy Vigil Games, which is the studio behind the Darksiders franchise. As a result of this, a few days ago the staff of Vigil packed up their desks and embraced unemployment. Vigil Games is officially dead, and as for the Darksiders IP, it looks like that has also succumbed to the influences of the protagonist from Darksiders II (i.e. Death – come on people, keep up.)

It seems that Homefront wasn’t enough to satiate Crytek’s hunger for THQ morsels, and as a result, the company has hired Vigial Games’ co-founder David Adams and another 35 Vigil staff members. The new Crytek employees will be heading up a new Crytek studio based in Austin, Texas.

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Yesterday, gaming media across the world nearly imploded from all the news that came out of the THQ assets auction. During the 22 hour court proceedings, a judge provisionally approved the sale of most of THQ’s development teams and intellectual properties. Today, that provisional approval has been signed off, meaning all of the acquisitions you read about are now final and legally binding. If you missed all of this due to Real Life getting in the way, then you can read about it all here.

thq_logo

It looks like this THQ saga, which has been in the news for over a year now, is finally reaching an end. Yesterday, during an open court hearing, numerous rival publishers gathered to fight over THQ’s assets. If you recall, late last year THQ announced that they had found a buyer. That purchase was over-ruled by THQ’s previous creditors and as such this court-led auction took place instead.

The entire proceedings took more than 22 hours to complete and were presided over by U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Marry F. Walrath. The bids that were received by rival publishers have not been finalised, but they have been accepted on the surface of it. There is no reason as to why the sales won’t go through, and it’s thought that the delay in the judge’s acceptance of the sales is a court proceedings formality. The closing acceptance of the sales should be done today US time.

Sadly, one of the casualties of this auction was Vigil Studios and their Darksiders IP. Vigil failed to receive any bids and as such, if no other buyer materialises in time, the studio and Darksiders will die when THQ dissolves.

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thq_logo

The vultures have been circling the flailing corpse of THQ for months now. The last time we checked in on this drawn-out decay of the publisher, THQ had secured a financial backer known as Clearlake Capital Group. That sale was given until 15 January 2013 for approval. Other interested parties claimed that wasn’t fair and now a judge has agreed.

Prior to Clearlake’s appearance and proposed purchase, THQ had a number of creditors. Those creditors have maintained that THQ should be made to auction itself off piece by piece. In other words: the publisher has to put up their gaming titles for sale to the highest bidder. A court ruling has agreed to this notion.

Reports are in that rival publishers eyeing the remains of THQ include Electronic Arts, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and Ubisoft. It’s also been noted that EA representatives have already made “site visits” to THQ. Intellectual properties up for grabs include Metro, Darksiders, Company of Heroes and Saints Row. Apparently, work on upcoming titles like South Park: The Stick of Truth remains unaffected.

Source: IGN

Yesterday it was revealed that beleaguered publisher THQ had filed for bankruptcy. In an open letter to fans, THQ president Jason Rubin explained what was happening to his company. As his letter detailed, THQ has been financially bolstered by private equity firm Clearlake Capital Group. Despite this, in order for THQ to be sold properly, it had to file for chapter 11 bankruptcy.

In his letter, Rubin stated that the “Chapter 11 process allows for other bidders to make competing offers for THQ. So while we are extremely excited about the Clearlake opportunity, we won’t be able to say that the deal is done for a month or so.”

In other words, all of THQ’s assets (studios, game IPs, staff etc) are up for auction for at least another month. This is obviously part of the reason why Clearlake took on THQ in the first place: potentially to make a sale. Now, if rumours are to be believed, Ubisoft is currently eyeing the THQ stables.

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