As of today, THQ has officially been dissolved: following an unsuccessful attempt to sell off the entire company as a whole, THQ’s individual assets and development teams were auctioned off to new owners today. While the sale of THQ isn’t quite complete yet (the sales have to be authorized by the court presiding over THQ’s bankruptcy hearings,) it seems like we’re finally nearing the end of all this THQ drama.
Koch Media, the mega-conglomerate that also owns Dead Island publisher Deep Silver, is the new owner of both the Saints Row (and its developer, Volition Inc.) and the Metro 2033 franchises. It’s currently unknown if the sale of these franchises will have any effect on the release of Saints Row 4 and Metro: Last Light, both of which were already in development before THQ’s collapse.
Sega has apparently won the bid for Relic, the development studio behind the Company of Heroes franchise and the Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War series. One of Sega’s most profitable franchises nowadays is the Total War series, so it’s no surprise that they’d to secure more strategy games in their line-up. The old school Shining Force fan in me wishes that they’d tap Relic to create a new, proper strategy-based Shining Force game, but I somehow doubt that’ll ever happen.
Ubisoft is now the publisher of South Park: Stick of Truth, as well as the new owner of THQ Montreal, a development studio that’s headed up by Patrice Desilets, a former Ubisoft employee who quit the company shortly after he finished work on Assassin’s Creed 2. I’m sure that’ll be an awkward reunion for Desilets.
Finally, Crysis developer Crytek has purchased the rights to THQ’s moderately successful Homefront franchise. Crytek is currently developing Homefront 2.
Strangely, we haven’t heard any news about who Darksiders developer Vigil Games has been sold off to, or if they’ve even been sold at all. While last summer’s Darksiders 2 didn’t sell enough to meet THQ’s lofty expectations, the game received enough critical and fan acclaim that I figured it would be the first of THQ’s franchises to get picked up by a new publisher. That apparently isn’t the case as of yet, but I’m still holding out hope that we’ll hear more news about Vigil and Darksiders soon, because it would be a shame to see the Darksiders franchise end like this.
We’ll have more updates as the story develops.
