January 24th saw the start of the THQ bankruptcy auction which signalled the end of THQ’s 24 year history. Now that it’s over here’s which company bought which products and for how much and what they plan to do.
SEGA
At the auction Sega managed to outbid Bethesda’s parent company Zenimax Media for Relic along with their IP’s that include Company of Heroes and they have hinted that they may possibly have the Warhammer license as well. Sega has said that they have no plans to change any of the staff members. Sega won the bid by paying $26.6 million which beat Zenimax’s bid of $26.3 million.
Meanwhile Koch Media were spending big at the auction and bought both the Saints Row series and its developers Volition for an insane $22.3 million which completely blew Ubisoft’s bid of $5.4 million out of the water.
Along with Saints Row Koch Media spent a much more reasonable $5.9 million, again beating Ubisoft’s who bided $5,175,000 for the rights to the Metro series. Koch Medias CEO Klemens Kundratitz has said that there is “no doubt” that both Metro: Last Light and the next Saints Row game will be released this year just like THQ had planned.
UBISOFT
Despite the fact that Koch Media managed to outbid Ubisoft for both Saints Row and Metro, Ubisoft still managed to grab a bunch of titles. Ubisoft paid $3.3 million for Obsidian’s South Park: The Stick of Truth which no-one else bided on and it’s still scheduled to be released in 2013.
Ubisoft also paid $2.5 million for the entire THQ Montreal studio who are currently working on the till now unheard about 1666 which is being made by Patrice Desilets who previously worked on Assassin’s Creed. When Ubisoft bought THQ Montreal they also got all of their unannounced titles like a project called “Underdog”.
CRYTEK
Crytek meanwhile managed to buy the Homefront license and the studio Vigil Games. Crytek got Homefront for $500,000 with no other bidders but they only bought Vigil Games for their staff who are all now part of Crytek USA. Crytek didn’t buy the rights to Darksiders 2 because Crytek only wanted the people and as of this moment no-one has bought the rights to Darksiders although Platinum Games has admitted to being interested in it which is a little surprising because Platinum specialise in linear action games compared to Darksiders 2’s open world.
TAKE-TWO INTERACTIVE
It’s been recently confirmed that Take-Two Interactive bought the rights to the WWE games along with the developers Yuke’s Co. The new WWE game will be developed by 2K Games but will still be made by Yuke’s Co. THQ will also be giving Take-Two all of their share in Yuke’s Co. which equals around $4.5 million. THQ also has to pay the WWE $650,000 in royalties as well.
Along with the WWE games Take-Two also bought the rights to the project Evolve (which used to be called Metamorphosis) from its creators Turtle Rock for $10,900,000 while Turtle Rock only bided $250,000 for it.
So that’s the results of the THQ auction and while THQ wasn’t my favourite company I still can’t help but feel a little sad about this.
