THQ Humble Bundle laugh a minute thread

I was not aware of that as I've always beat the average price on the bundles I have purchased. I really would have thought the add-on's they tack on during the drive would at least require you to have beat the average price when you donated since its tied to that for new people who purchase now.

Anyone want a copy of Saints Row: The Third, Titan Quest or Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War?

EDIT: all gone

I'll take Titan Quest and Warhammer!

I can give your SR3 a good home if you still have it kicking around.

This just passed 5 million dollars.

Oops.

http://kotaku.com/5969846/thq-files-for-chapter-11-bankruptcy

GOD I HOPE SO. But yeah, the other shoe had to drop, that $100M note wasn't going anywhere without something drastic like this.

COMPANY OF HEROES 2 MUST LIVE!!!

Homefront II, on the other hand, I can give no fucks about.

I'm looking forward to a srs South Park RPG.

Not as negative a news at it seems:

http://www.giantbomb.com/news/thq-s...uptcy-secures-buyer-for-companys-assets/4477/

Well, SOMEONE has to get the shaft, or else they wouldn't be doing it. If I held some of those "certain legacy obligations" they are looking to shed I'd be mighty nervous.

Looking at their last quarterly: http://investor.thq.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=96376&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1754428&highlight=

Accounts payable looks like its going to get cut and burned, along with the $100M credit note.

Looks like THQ won't be sailing through bankruptcy as smoothly as management hoped. Bankruptcy judge Mary F. Walrath seems suspicious of the quick sale to Clearlake and thinks breaking the company up might prove better value for creditors.

But what would provide the best value to gamers? Did she ever even consider that?

No, because her duty is to the people that THQ owes money to, and is seeking not to pay via the bankruptcy. "Certain legacy items" I think they called it.

What about THQ's obligation to release Company of Heroes 2?

Expect a kickstarter soon.

"Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., which bought “Mortal Kombat”‘-maker Midway Games Inc. out of bankruptcy in July 2009, would be interested in evaluating THQ’s assets if the sale process is extended, Howard J. Weg, a lawyer representing the company, said at yesterday’s hearing."

The judge might be quite correct that if you let Warner brothers, Activision, EA, Ubisoft etc ransack the corpse, you might get a lot more cash by putting saints row, company of heroes, darksiders and metro on the auction block and then let the rest of THQ die.

The article also reiterates that u draw was pretty much what did them in.

To be fair, her duty is to the law, not the creditors.

I could see WB picking up some of THQ's stuff to expand their own lineup.

It's getting interesting now - the carve up is on, auction to be held on 22 January. EA confirmed as in the mix, alongside Warner Brothers.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-01-07-thq-allowing-bids-for-specific-titles

Also, some good really detailed, business/financial stuff here - http://www.distressed-debt-investing.com/2013/01/distressed-debt-thq-bankruptcy-update.html

In my opinion, there is pretty much no chance of THQ continuing as unified publisher - unless its as some sort of living undead IP back catalog like Interplay.

All the best bits (Company of Heroes, the near finished stuff like Metro, Darksiders IP and Saints Row / Volition) will get picked clean by the other publishers. What's left that they dont want (back catalog sales, shuttered IP like Homefront, Red Faction) won't be enough to sustain a large publisher on its own.

The Humble Bundle sale combined with the cheap Steam offers ($25 publisher pack etc) has probably suppressed the value of back catalogue sales for a while as well.

Hehe, the equity holders are having a complain now too: http://www.savethq.org/

(good luck guys, equity / shareholders get nothing in these scenarios. Unless you are a Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan shareholders and get bailed out of course)

I think it's good that Talorc is taking Kalle and kerzain's concerns very seriously, cos a lesser man might have assumed they were kidding.

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing

Since this has become the THQ dies by a thousand cuts thread:

South Park Digital objects to the new South Park game being sold at auction.

They say THQ owes them over $2 million, and that they can't sell the game until they pay Matt and Trey. And they want to see the list of bidders to make sure that whoever buys the game will actually be able to get it done.

Oh yeah, and that auction was supposed to be today.

You didn't link what you thought you linked.

I guess Hitler was really, really mad at THQ. Too mad to remember what he was mad about.

Oops! Fixed in original post.

I blame Hitler.

Only sort-of related, but Atari has also filed for bankruptcy, both in France (Atari S.A./Infogrames) and the U.S. (Atari Inc./GT Interactive). They will be selling off a lot of their assets soon.

Some rumors regarding the bidding for THQ studios / assets by other publishers. Relic and Company of Heroes may end up with Sega and Volition / Saint's Row with Koch Media.

The thought that Creative Assembly (Sega) might get Relic / Company of Heroes - and presumably some possibility of the Warhamer 40K licence to go with their shiny new Warhammer Fantasy licence makes me all tingly inside.

I have no idea how Koch Media came up with the cash to top other parties for arguably THQ's best franchise, Saint's Row. They better hope Volition still has all their staff or they have a snowball's chance of getting Saint's Row 4 done.

Kotaku has a copy of the the letter from the CEO:

I'm glad they found buyers for most (all?) of their assets and studios, that should keep disruptions to a minimum.

I hope the studios that did get bought get to keep their employees.

I'm very excited Volition is going to Koch, since they publish the X games through Deep Silver. ;)

According to a twitter account by the name of DDInvesting, these are the approximate prices that each property went for at the auction:

• Relic: Sega for $26M - Sega will now have licenses for both Warhammer and WH40K. Relic seems like a good fit, given how Creative Assembly has been treated.
• Evolve: Take Two for $11M - A multiplayer-focused project by Turtle Rock Studios, of Left 4 Dead fame.
• Volition: Koch Media for $22.3M - This is a very strange pairing, and I just hope that they treat Volition right. Saints Row was included, no word about Red Faction.
• Metro: Koch Media for $5.8M - I know THQ was positioning this as an "AAA" game but it's still a relatively niche franchise, right?
• South Park: Ubisoft for $3.2M - That price seems a bit high to me, but what do I know.
• THQ Montreal: Ubisoft for $2.5M - Just when they thought they had escaped...
• Homefront: Crytek for $0.5M - Seeing as how they've already been working on a sequel for a while, it figures that they want to own the franchise for themselves now.

Others might have been sold and simply not made public yet. I know Double Fine was interested in picking up their Costume Quest and Stacking properties. If the worthless Homefront name managed half a million then those should come pretty cheap.

Looks like nobody lit a candle for Vigil.

So should I be cautiously optimistic about the future of Relic, CoH, and DoW?

If SEGA leave them to just do their thing, like Creative Assembly, it seems like a fairly good fit.

If anything, that price on South Park is probably too low, unless there's a significant chance for loss if the other related legal action goes through. Stick of Truth is the one that Parker and Stone actually care about enough to write for. I strongly suspect it will be a bigger hit than a lot of people think, and that's not even accounting for the fact that it's pretty close to already done, so there shouldn't be too much more spend on getting it out.

Volition and Deep Silver is weird. I just hope that the fact that they're not physically located in Germany means that nothing happens to Saint's Row, regardless of their ownership. Is Deep Silver based in Germany? I thought they were, anyway. Either way, I have a hard time conceiving how the company would manage to interfere with the goings on at Volition anyway, which is safely secreted away in Middle America. As for Red Faction....I honestly didn't even enjoy Riff Action Gorilla that much (I guess I'm just not super made for open world games - at least not for that one, anyway), but I imagine we're at least a few years out of another one of those happening regardless. Have to wait for the stink of their past two less-than-catastrophically-successful releases to clear, particularly when the alternative competing for development time is a title that actually does make money.

That's what lame people at my last job used to add to their signatures. They were not good people, and they did nothing.

not sure why no one brought vigil, their last 2 projects were both good solid games..

Koch Media is Deep Silver, makers of Risen. Weird fit.

Also raise your hand if you thought the Koch brothers had ventured into publishing games.