THQ Humble Bundle laugh a minute thread

I had to do some checking on Koch Media to see if it was in any way related to the Koch brothers (spoiler: it's not).

Neither of the Darksiders sold hugely, and it's not as if there are a shortage of studios for hire that can produce solid character-action games - look at the new DmC by Ninja Theory, for example.

They also publish the X games. ;) I'd honestly never heard of Koch Media until yesterday, but Deep Silver I've known of for ages.

That totally invalidates a good history of publishing solid games.

$2.5 million seems awfully low for THQ Montreal.

Unproven studio I guess?

From http://www.destructoid.com/vigil-games-lead-combat-designer-says-his-goodbyes-243038.phtml

Nobody has cared about games based on x-sports since Tony Hawk 2.

Oh my friends, my friends, don't ask me
What your sacrifice was for!
Empty chairs at empty tables
Where my friends will sing no more

*rolls eyes* Har dee har, good sir.

Freespace 3!

Game Informer has posted an interview with Jason Rubin.

Called it, sadly.

Vigil was probably the best studio in the pile. Quite a shame.

If Vigil's new game, code named Crawler, really was as impressive as Jason Rubin says it was, it's hard to imagine why no one snapped it up. I'm getting the impression that the time for that to happen has come and gone, which is too bad. I'd love to know what they were up to.

It was probably gamer-impressive but not market-impressive. That or it just wasn't shown. Or they're lying! Who knows.

There are any number of possible reasons. It's new IP, which increases risk. It may have been a particularly unusual premise, or game type, which increases risk. The budget for the game may have been very high, which increases risk.

Just because one publisher thinks a game is super awesome is no guarantee that any other publisher wants to come anywhere near it.

Better than Relic and Volition? Nope.

There's also indication that it's a long way from release, so that was probably another factor. A studio like Relic having CoH2 more or less ready to go is going to be much more attractive for a new publisher.

According to that interview, there will soon be another opportunity to buy the rest of THQ's things. Darksiders, Vigil, Red Faction, uDraw, Titan Quest, Full Spectrum Warrior, etc.

Yeah, they're going to have to try their hardest to get cash for every single asset to try and maximize the return to creditors.

I had this thought yesterday, what if a license doesn't sell at all? Does it get assigned to a creditor in lieu of cash?

Imagine you own a warehouse full of unsold uDraws... THQ owes you a few thousand dollars... you get a letter in the mail telling you that you are now the proud owner of something called "Titan Quest".

We should team up and see if we can buy Full Spectrum Warrior.

Yeah. I was thinking more about the farewell letter from the combat designer at Vigil who indicated pretty clearly that the studio was pretty well cleaned out in terms of personnel.

Yeah, I didn't get the impression there was another sale of the studios, just properties if someone wants to make followup games or something.

Fuck yes.

Time for a Broken Forum kickstarter to raise money so we can purchase the Darksiders or Titan Quest IP.

1. Raise money
2. Buy IP
3. ???
4. Profit!

We'll have to get the word out that those IP's are squares.

Apparently Sega did not purchase the Homeworld IP?

http://www.bluesnews.com/s/138416/indie-dev-seeks-homeworld-ip

From the Rubin article:

With the exception of Vigil, it seems the worst case scenarios have been averted. I didn't see a single bid from EA or Activision.

Now to see where those delicious back catalogs go! I hope red faction gets a nice home that'll make another guerilla.

If they just wanted to make a game with destruction like that they wouldn't need the license. Pretty sure exactly zero people cared about the Mars setting.

That was my thought with homeworld as well, the setting wasn't really all that defined, and the combat wasn't even particularly well balanced. Save the money of buying the license and just make a game.

I think there is a couple reason why Activision didn't bid.

1. Vivendi probably still trying to unload their gaming department which includes Activision Blizzard.
2. None of the IP holds any interest to Activision, between Blizzard and Activision they dominates most of the Genres that was up for sale..

I wouldn't worry at all about the Titan Quest IP, since Iron Lore got kicked to the curb by THQ a while ago and is busily churning out Grim Dawn on their own.

Iron Lore was more than Arthur Bruno. Iron Lore is scattered around a bunch of companies all up and down the east coast.

Wrong. I liked the mars setting.

But a non-mars setting is fine too.

I bet they didn't mean it as tongue in cheek as me either :-)

Eventually it sells, because they start taking offers like "All the loose change I just found stashed around my car to pay for parking.. which is like $10.25" SOLD!!

What is ALSO interesting is the backup bids - really shows Koch Media pulled a WTF?!? move - way overbid everyone for Volition / Saints row.

Courtesy Joystiq

Relic (studio) and Company of Heroes (IP)
Winning bid: $26.6 million - Sega Corporation
Backup bidder: $26.3 million - Zenimax Media

THQ Montreal (studio), with 1666 (IP) and Underdog (IP)
Winning bid: $2.5 million - Ubisoft
Backup bidder: N/A

Evolve (IP) aka Metamorphosis
Winning bid: $10.894 million - Take-Two Interactive
Backup bidder: $250,000 Turtle Rock Studios, Inc.

Volition (studio) and Saints Row (IP)
Winning bid: $22.3 million - Koch Media GmbH (Deep Silver)
Backup bidder: $5.4 million - Ubisoft

Homefront (IP)
Winning bid: $544,218 - Crytek GmbH
Backup bidder: N/A

Metro (license), which includes 2033 and 2034
Winning bid: $5,877,551 - Koch Media GmbH (Deep Silver)
Backup bidder: $5.175 million - Ubisoft

South Park: The Stick of Truth (license)
Winning bid: $3,265,306 - Ubisoft
Backup bidder: N/A

...except they could've gotten it for $6m.

Well that depends. They weren't just bidding against each other but also against the Clearlake cumulative bid. The sum of bids still had to add up to more than the Clearlake bulk bid or the sales wouldn't have gone through, or that is my understanding,