Future of THQ is in question...

In case anyone was interested in the WWE games, IGN is reporting that Take-Two acquired the rights.

kuddles wrote:
Bonnonon wrote:

I would also be interested in finding out the big difference in price gap.

My guess is Deep Silver really wanted to get that studio, so they made their opening bid high in the hopes to show they're serious.

I guess that makes sense. Avoid a bidding war and stop others from being even interested in bidding.

I pre-ordered Darksiders II for PC but because we got a puppy right around the time it came out, I never started it and then other games came along. I think that's going to be my next game after Far Cry 3. It means absolutely nothing but it will be my little pouring one out for Vigil after reading this heart-tugging post.

Serious question: Should I be buying any THQ games I was interested in picking up off Steam now in case they suddenly get pulled and don't go back up?

kuddles wrote:

Serious question: Should I be buying any THQ games I was interested in picking up off Steam now in case they suddenly get pulled and don't go back up?

Bare minimum, SR3, and Dawn of War 2: Retribution. Both are, AFAIK, Steamworks, so they should continue working even if everything goes to hell.

Unfortunately, Company of Heroes uses Relic's in-house login system, so who knows if that's going to still work after the next few weeks.

Wow, for no good reason some in here got vile toward Vigil/Darksiders, people that likely just lost their jobs. GG, Internet.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

I pre-ordered Darksiders II for PC but because we got a puppy right around the time it came out, I never started it and then other games came along. I think that's going to be my next game after Far Cry 3. It means absolutely nothing but it will be my little pouring one out for Vigil after reading this heart-tugging post.

So Vigil is truly done, then? Even if the Darksiders IP is bought then it's not going to be the same. We lost a talented team, and I am sad to read in that very post they were working on something that, now, we'll probably never know about outside of leaked screenshots or demo reels.

That's truly depressing, man. I hope their hard work at least earns them all jobs.

A translated tweet from the head of Platinum Games, Atsushi Inaba:

"In THQ studio and IP selling off auction, Darksiders is unsold? [We] wanna buy it...on the cheap..."

*shrug*

Via Kotaku.

Blind_Evil wrote:
"In THQ studio and IP selling off auction, Darksiders is unsold? [We] wanna buy it...on the cheap..."

*shrug* YES.

QFT

cyrax wrote:
Blind_Evil wrote:
"In THQ studio and IP selling off auction, Darksiders is unsold? [We] wanna buy it...on the cheap..."

*shrug* YES.

QFT

I'm sticking with *shrug* until I hear more. Obviously I'd love one of my favorite developers to snag one of my favorite franchises, but this doesn't seem substantial enough to actually get excited about.

Blind_Evil wrote:
cyrax wrote:
Blind_Evil wrote:
"In THQ studio and IP selling off auction, Darksiders is unsold? [We] wanna buy it...on the cheap..."

*shrug* YES.

QFT

I'm sticking with *shrug* until I hear more. Obviously I'd love one of my favorite developers to snag one of my favorite franchises, but this doesn't seem substantial enough to actually get excited about.

I'm excited about the possibility, because that's what it is. Why would I get excited about a fact that isn't? Don't worry, be happy!

I am gleefully picturing what would happen if Relic and Creative Assembly combined forces on one strategy title.

As for the value of Relic, I know from interviews that even CoH (a modest success) had a long tail with steady sales, even at bargain prices. I am assuming that the logic would be that everyone who snapped it up when the game fell below 20 bucks will be looking towards CoH 2. At the minimum, it is a safe bet that their 4th kick at the cat will have the same solid trailing sales. It is a bit like a TV show with solid DVD, re-run, and syndication potential.

Considering I spent maybe 2 hours of combat in Darksiders 2 out of 20+ hours total playtime based on the internal clock and stats, I don't know if Platinum is the studio that should be getting Darksiders.

Then again, Platinum is made up of Clover people, right? And Clover made Okami?

But at the same time, they'd only be getting IP, and Vigil remains done for.

ccesarano wrote:

Then again, Platinum is made up of Clover people, right? And Clover made Okami?

The answer to both of these question is "Yes". Which means they made the best Zelda game after Ocarina and Darksiders was the best Zelda game since Okami.

Jason Rubin gave a refreshingly candid interview on the auction. If he's even partially sincere in what he says, he seems like a real genuinely good guy and one I would have liked to work for. Most people who have followed this company know that Brian Farrell's bumbling as CEO created most of their turmoil but it's nice to see Rubin take a not so subtle stab at the upper echelons there.

So whats the deal with Homeworld? Is that under Relics umbrella?

App developer turns to crowdfunding to buy Homeworld IP from THQ

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

Jason Rubin gave a refreshingly candid interview on the auction. If he's even partially sincere in what he says, he seems like a real genuinely good guy and one I would have liked to work for. Most people who have followed this company know that Brian Farrell's bumbling as CEO created most of their turmoil but it's nice to see Rubin take a not so subtle stab at the upper echelons there.

I wonder if the asking price for Vigil was too high? Did they have a starting price? Or was it "start at zero and see who bids what"? I wonder if people can somehow show demo reels to publishers that weren't present, or perhaps Rubin can use some of his inside contacts to try and encourage Sony to purchase Vigil (seeing how inFamous and Heavy Rain have been treated, successful games without demands to churn out regular sequels, I feel like Sony would be a fair home willing to give new ideas a shot).

I really hope discussions with Sony or Nintendo happened in some room somewhere. I could see both of those companies doing neat stuff with Vigil.

Twitter suggests there may be more interest than just the Darksiders IP. Price is an issue, but Platinum guys seem really curious.

Honestly, this is starting to make me feel rather stunned. Platinum, from what I can tell, is a purely Japanese company, and this guy is asking if anyone wants to work with/at Platinum. Now, that could simply mean a few key people, but that such a Japanese game studio is so interested in a Western one speaks volumes to me. It also brings to mind the question of whether THQ marketed their properties poorly. Is it possible Darksiders could have been a huge franchise in Japan? Not that such a thing matters much, but still.

If we're lucky, we get another situation like Epic swallowing most of the Big Huge Games employees after the fallout at 38 Studios.

ccesarano wrote:

I wonder if the asking price for Vigil was too high? Did they have a starting price? Or was it "start at zero and see who bids what"?

Usually in these things, it is assets + a "fair market value" for IP. A judge has to approve any bid so it is not too low. Have to pay the lawyers at least. But it is usually blind bidding so other people cannot see what was bid.

I love it when devs reach out.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthre...

My name is Ben Cureton, and I was the Lead Combat Designer at Vigil Games. I'm sitting at my desk among... what appears to be a warzone. The walls look bare. It's quiet.

The seats are empty.

We've all been on edge for the past couple months... and more so, the last couple weeks. I mean, I'm sure you can imagine what it's like to wonder if you will have a job tomorrow. Most of us here joked about it just to keep the mood light, but we all knew what could happen. Now I look around and I realize... it did happen.

Am I sad? Well yea. I've been in this industry for 20 years. Seriously. Two decades. I've been laid off more than once. It sucks every time. But am I sad I don't have a job? Not really... I'm sure I'll get another one eventually. I'm sad because it won't be THIS job. It won't be at Vigil. That's why I'm sad. The people I waged war with are no longer together. The people that I bled with, vented with, argued with (often times LOUDLY), and kicked back with... these people will never be together again in the same combination.

Not that it was perfect. But what is perfect? Did I like coming to work? Yes. Was I proud of the work that I did? Yes. More importantly, was I proud of the work that WE did? Absolutely. I knew, without a shadow of the doubt, that the project we were working on (Codenamed: Crawler) was going to blow people away. In fact, it DID blow people away. We did, in TWO months, what many companies haven't done in a year. The pride of knowing that no one was doing anything like us was so satisfying, it kept us coming to work and giving 100% every single day, even through the dark times.

... so maybe you can imagine what it feels like when you read the list of who bought what only to discover your name is not on the list. Why? Did we do something wrong? Were we not good enough? Were we not worth 'anything?' Imagine that.

Vigil was filled with people that I would put up against the best in the industry. People that made my work better, people that made me a better designer, and people that made me a better person. And now they are gone.

Their seats are empty.

It's OK, though. I guess this post makes it sound a bit melodramatic. Seriously... if you work in the video game industry you have to be resilient. Doing what you love often comes with a price - anyone who has been around for a while can tell you that. Today, that price has been paid. That being said, I'd still never dissuade anyone from following their dreams if their dream is to make video games. While it's not as romantic as it sounds, it's sure a hell of a lot of fun.

So don't cry for the people at Vigil. We made games for game players. I have no Horror stories from working here... only Honor stories. Through both praise and critiques alike, our goal was always to make a product as if we, ourselves, were the end-user. We may have gotten pushed and pulled in certain directions by forces out of our control, we were always in it to make games for game players. And that's what we did.

I can only hope that those spared from the other companies remain employed long into the future. There is not much worse than false hope, and these people deserve to continue making great games. You may not know their names, but they exist, and they bleed, sweat, and cry for your entertainment. I mean that honestly, with no negativity. They do it... no, WE do it... because we want you to have a good time.

In closing, I can only say thank you to the fans of Vigil games. Your support means more than you can imagine. Your feedback (both positive and negative) gave us long-lasting insight that we will all take with us, wherever we may go. You are the reason we made Darksiders 1 &2... and you are the reason we will continue to make games.

And with that... my seat is empty.

Ben Cureton
Lead Combat Designer
Vigil Games

P.S. This is no place for a horse.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

Jason Rubin gave a refreshingly candid interview on the auction. If he's even partially sincere in what he says, he seems like a real genuinely good guy and one I would have liked to work for. Most people who have followed this company know that Brian Farrell's bumbling as CEO created most of their turmoil but it's nice to see Rubin take a not so subtle stab at the upper echelons there.

If anything, he comes off as way too hard on himself in that interview. Considering he only took the job last May, he was pretty much screwed to begin with, especially if it's true that the company was in even more dire straits than they let on. If you're drowning in debt, there's very little you can do to turn your situation around in an industry that requires millions of dollars and several years of investment to make more revenue.

To me, it's clear that Brian Farrell's boneheaded moves are to blame for this mess.

I saw DrawU was mentioned as part of THQ's downfall. I never even saw the thing, but how do you estimate sales would be off by ~100 million dollars? I'd be interested to hear more details of who messed up there.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-02-02-thq-details-full-extent-of-udraw-disaster

So here's the uDraw story as I've heard it in multiple places. In 2010, they released it as a Wii exclusive. They manufactured a relatively low amount as they wanted to try it as an experiment and it sold several times beyond their expectations on the Wii. They apparently commissioned some "market research" (which must like "stock analyst" means they asked a person to pull an idea out of their ass with no accountability) to determine how well the product would do if versions were made for 360 and PS3 and the research indicated it would do equally well. In order to get a better manufacturing deal and to meet the demand they were told to expect, they produced over a million uDraw tablets in advance and commissioned the development of several exclusive games for it. They launched it on 360 and PS3 and as anyone who has looked at motion control add-ons recently could have told them, absolutely no one gave a sh*t. They only sold a tiny handful of them and had to burn almost $100 of cash to write-off the rest. THQ had been badly run and largely losing money for years and the uDraw failure took what could have been the cash to save them for another couple of years and pissed it all away. The last year was them trying to get a few big releases out to try to stabilize them in the short term but they banked the year on Darksiders II, a sequel to a game that sold modestly at best and which has ultimately failed to break even. It was the final nail in the coffin for the company but while their biggest stupid mistake, it was the last in a very long chain of them. Had Brian Farrell not been so stupid, he never would have done the HD uDraw and brought Jason Rubin on board then rather than in May of this year when the writing was already on the wall.

From Relic: http://community.companyofheroes.com...

Hey All,

First off, I’ll be posting this on a number of different community sites – sorry up front for the form-letter nature.

So, big news over the last few days, some bad, some good.

First off the bad news. I’m sure most of you will know this; some very good people have lost their jobs, and a company with a long legacy and a great relationship with Relic is no more. I’d like to express on behalf of the COH2 team and – I hope – the community at large our sincere thanks and admiration for what THQ has done for Relic and for our games over the years. They brought you Company of Heroes, and they worked hard to keep us going through the years. We shared stresses and triumphs and got more done with limited resources than I dared think possible because we worked with smart, resourceful people doing their best every day.

Publishers are much maligned, big game companies are often seen as evil yet the fact is they facilitate our hobbies as consumers, they help us enjoy the love of gaming and they bring enjoyment to millions. Do they do it as a business? Yes, of course, but their role is critical yet often disparaged. Truth is, a company like Relic could not deliver a game like Company of Heroes on its own. We could not ensure millions of players enjoy Dawn of War or Space Marine. We could not fund or develop raise awareness of Company of Heroes 2 on our own – it takes a real partnership.

It has always boggled my mind when we start putting credits together at the end of the game and you see just how many people it takes to get a big game finished. For a developer like me, a publisher isn’t a faceless corporation; THQ was Tony, Simon, Jon, George, Suzanne, Danny, and Bobby. It was Jason, and Ron, and Brian. I want to thank them all. These were people we spent time with and laughed with, we traveled together over great distances, we shared stories of our families, we faced challenges. THQ was people we spoke with every day, people who exhibited great passion about our games and the industry. We’ll see their contributions again soon, I’m sure.

The good news is that Relic and Company of Heroes 2 are intact. Relic will continue moving forward with Company of Heroes 2, but we have some gaps on our team in the short term. As you know we’re without our community manager, Bobby. Special thanks to him for his tireless efforts and the great rapport he built in the COH community.

What’s next? I can only personally speculate that Relic has unique value for Sega; that they liked what we were doing, and that they will want us to continue what we are doing. I know they’re excited. Apart from that, we don’t have a lot we can talk about yet – if you can use Google, you likely have the same information we do. We promise we’ll try to tackle the transition as efficiently as possible so that we can get back to Company of Heroes 2 as quickly as we can.

The team is raring to go, we’re as happy as we can be about our situation, and COH2 is looking and feeling better every day. Our joy at being able to continue on the game we love is tempered with concern for our colleagues at THQ and other studios but as clichéd as it may sound, the show must go on.

Stay tuned.

Quinn Duffy

Game Director, COH2

KingGorilla wrote:

I am gleefully picturing what would happen if Relic and Creative Assembly combined forces on one strategy title.

Excuse me while I change my pants.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

They apparently commissioned some "market research" (which must like "stock analyst" means they asked a person to pull an idea out of their ass with no accountability) to determine how well the product would do if versions were made for 360 and PS3 and the research indicated it would do equally well.

PACHTER! I knew it!!!

IMAGE(http://s1.postimage.org/hmf4m7427/kirk_pachter.jpg)

Bunch of THQ staffers on their last day pouring out a Saint's Row 40 for their homies. For as brutal as the video game industry is, I've seen a remarkable number of positive comments today from people who worked there. The company was a mess but it seems a lot of people still really liked it there.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time with THQ. It wasn't always the smoothest of rides to say the least, but the people were great to work with. I hope everything will be fine, but I admit that I have some concerns. The studios that were sold off will just keep on trucking. I'm sad that I won't be able to help the project I was on through to the masses, but such is the way of things.

It was a pleasure, THQ.