THQ’s most popular franchises, like Saints Row and Metro 2033, have already found new homes following the publisher’s bankruptcy. While other third parties were quick to snatch up some of THQ’s IPs, some of their other series’, such as Vigil Games’ Darksiders, have yet to be sold. THQ (or what’s left of it) announced today that their remaining franchises will soon be sold off in a second, final auction.
Besides Darksiders, the intellectual rights to franchises like Homeworld, Red Faction, and MX vs ATV will be sold off the highest bidder this April. Interested parties have until April 15th to put up their final bids for THQ’s remaindered franchises, giving these series’ one last chance at finding a new home.
While rights to specific franchises like Darksiders and Red Faction are being auctioned off separately, THQ has chosen to group all of their less popular franchises into two big bundles: one for IPs that were owned entirely by THQ (such as Titan Quest, de Blob, Destroy All Humans, and… uh, Juiced 2: Import Nights,) and the other for licensed titles (such as DoubleFine’s Costume Quest, the Worms franchise, and the Marvel Super Heroes series of kids’ games.)
I really liked Darksiders, Titan Quest, and even de Blob, so I’m hoping that these franchises find a new home with a competent publisher. Since it’s an auction, nobody knows how much the rights to these series’ will sell for, but considering these are THQ’s less popular franchises, I wouldn’t expect them to go for much: during the “main” THQ bankruptcy auction, Crytek bought the rights to the Homefront franchise for about $500,000… To put that in perspective, I’m pretty sure you can’t even buy a house in certain areas of California for that much money, but apparently it’s enough to pay for your own video game franchise (albeit a B-tier one.) Almost makes me want to start a Kickstarter and buy the rights to Darksiders myself…
