Court-supervised sale process will see bidding on franchises including Darksiders, Red Faction and licensed software like Marvel Super Hero Squad.
THQ has announced that it will sell the remainder of its intellectual properties in a court-supervised sale. The publisher has already sold the majority of its studios and games following news of its bankruptcy last month.
THQ will now accept bids on franchises including Darksiders, Red Faction, Homeworld, MX; owned software including Big Beach Sports and Destroy All Humans!; as well as licensed software including Marvel Super Hero Squad, Supreme Commander, Worms, and more.
The publisher said that it expects to complete the bidding and sale process for the remaining IP assets by mid-May.
Initial bids for the properties must be submitted by April 1, 2013, with final bids required by April 15. The sales will be presented to a court for final approval in May. THQ says it has already received more than 100 expressions of interest for various titles.
Last month, the court approved the sale of three THQ studios (THQ Montreal, Volition Inc, and Relic Entertainment), as well as games including Evolve, Homefront 2, Metro: Last Light, and South Park: The Stick of Truth.
Sales from the auction totalled around $72 million, though the total value is higher. THQ said that it expects the total sale process to have generated $100 million, which includes "certain assets and other intellectual properties" excluded from the sale.
Grand Theft Auto parent publisher Take-Two Interactive recently obtained the WWE license.
Laura Parker is the Associate Editor of GameSpot Australia. She loves adventure games, sparkly stuff, Trivial Pursuit, cake, Master Chief, earthworms, and rhetorical questions. She once stole a sandwich from Peter Molyneux.
the only franchise that i was really interested in hearing about was red faction because im still holding out for volition to make another game similar to guerrilla. here's to hoping that whatever publisher acquires volition will green light a project like that and that volition wishes to do so.
Red Faction is probably my all time favorite THQ property. I just hope they reboot the franchise. While Armegedom was fun, the addition of "aliens" was the dumbest thing in the world for the franchise. Not to mention they were called aliens, even though they were indigenous to mars, which would make them MARTIANS and the humans would be the aliens. It was all because of a stupid made for tv movie deal with Sci-Fi channel. Which TOTALY sucks too. the channel and the movie. Hey lets cancel every decent show that takes a brain cell to watch and only keep the shows that dumb people enjoy. I mean really!!! Humans have been living on mars for over 200 years and BOOM all of sudden mars is filled with life, that they had no hint of before even though humans had been digging, drilling and living underground from the very start.... okay. take a great universes and totaly cheapen it up. good job... well they helped sink THQ.
I hope that Darksiders and Red Faction go to companies that care about making good games. Darksiders 2 and Red Faction Armageddon were both horrendous compared to the previous titles in both of their series'.
It'll be nice to see these games get a second chance after what THQ did to them.
@flammable_zeus your opinion is horrendous!!!! If Darksiders 1 and Red Faction Guriilla both get a 9 out 10. Then Darksiders 2 and Red Faction Armegedon get a 8 out 10. There was steps in the WRONG direction, but they were both GREAT GAMES!
I wish someone like Stardock or Paradox would pick up the Homeworld IP, someone that'd make a good new homeworld, we need another one :(.
Darksiders also hopefully will find a good home that will finish up the series.
please somebody i want next gen motocross game based off mx vs atv alive tech and just evolve from there its really good
@bkohary Technically Kock Media group - they recently acquired the creator of the IP, Freespace, Volition Inc. I read Knock Media will publish Volition titles under their Deep Silver label. (see http://www.volition-inc.com/contact/ , Contact Volition section)
@ypsallig @bkohary I don't believe that's true. Volition made the game, but the IP is held by Interplay. Interplay is a zombie corp that doesn't have enough capital to make a game. But they won't sell their IP for any reasonable price because they are trying to scrape enough money together to try to live again. Interplay sadly owns both Descent and Freespace, and thus we are very unlikely to ever see anything exactly in that model come out of Volition (or Koch as their new owner.)
@jimrhurst Hmm...that makes sense! I thought Interplay was long gone; just dug up some info and I'm wrong, they're much alive! God bless them for bringing us Stainless's Carmageddon.
Thx for your feedback ;)
I hope by the end of may they still haven't sold the darksiders franchise. why? cause those are the only 2 THQ games I'd like to buy but if they keep on making sequels I just won't buy them. I'm not looking forward to buying long franchise games. I think kingdom hearts will be the last franchise I keep supporting.
2 Like I hope EA buys all of it and creates amazing new innovative fun titles! With lots of DLC! :)
1 Like Hope a good studio picks up the Red Faction series. Another open-world Red Faction like Guerrilla, with improved destruction, would be a great showcase for the power of next-gen consoles.
I hope these properties don't just die. Then again, I think the devs have moved on...
Wargaming, you listen up! Please buy Supreme Commander and give it back to GPG. Don't think, just do it, do it, do it , do it, do it...
Do it.
2 Like Given the quality of these left-over franchises maybe the buyers purposely allowed them to be in the "bargain bin" for this sell-off so they could get them for cheap. Could be a good thing if talented studios who otherwise would not be able to get them manage to snap these up.
@danusty Because Platinum is an epic studio. Bayonetta, Vanquish, Metal gear Rising, Anarchy Reigns to name a few. I think the studio could do Darksiders Justice. There are sequences in Metal gear Rising that literally blew my mind. The only gripe I have of MGR is its a pretty short game, other than that the game is nearly perfect.
That being said, Platinum games is old Capcom, and basically on of my favorite developers out there. (sooo tired of shooting games.)
1 Like @Hellhound30x Seems like a perfect marriage to me. Hell they can probably get Nintendo to give them the cash to buy it to make Darksiders 3 Wii U exclusive. Darksiders 2 btw IMO is how one does a Wii U port "right" plays great on just the tablet, tablet has some cool functionality when playing on your TV screen but none too intrusive.
@Serpentes420 @Hellhound30x Considering how poorly the WiiU has sold, and how 3rd party developers are already abandoning it, it would be a really dumb idea to make a 3rd party game an exclusive. Platinum's already been burned with Bayonetta 2, they don't need to do it again.
@_Silent_Jay_ yeh? totally buying a wii u to play Bayonetta 2... I don't care if its not selling. I don't care if people don't like the wii u. I don't care if developers are jumping ship. All I know is at the end of the day, I freaking love Bayonetta, and it was my game of the year, the year it was released. I Will be buying a Wii U when Bayonetta 2 is released. End of story. (=
1 Like The more I read about THQ, the more I realize, I don't like ANY of their games. It's not on purpose, I just don't like any games they made.
@gatsbythepig I haven't liked their recent games too much but that was more to do with THQ than the concept of the games. THQ has shown that a lot of what they had can be done right. They just didn't seem to realise they were on the right track at one point and kept going downhill for some reason.
I am very sad because some of the interesting titles like COH gone but I see some HOT girls dating below the article section
Shoot! If only I hadn't blocked all content from nrcdn.com - I don't get to see ads for HOT girls underneath a news story about bankruptcy...
Whoa, wait a second, isn't Worms owned by Team 17? Unless they meant publising license...
BTW, the Unicorn Apocalypse ad is starting to get annoying...
@John_Aguilera I hope he doesn't. they will bring famine and pestilence. nono of those being a good thing
Bankruptcy court grants motion to approve sale of assets totaling $100 million; company will continue to look for Vigil Games buyer.
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