THQ Humble Bundle laugh a minute thread

As happy as I am that most of the titles I like found homes, I totally would have preferred Clearlake owning THQ. Though they haven't always been the best, Rubin did a lot to turn the company around and get it making quality games on a regular basis.

Wait, so this means Take2 didn't buy Turtle Rock? Must've heard a wrong report.

Kinda sad looking at that, a studio trying to buy their own work only to be way outbid. Wonder if Take2 is taking the IP for their own studios or is going to let Turtle Rock work on it.

He wasn't even President for 6 months. What did they ship in that time? Darksiders 2?

Was that it? Huh. Well, they seemed to be making an effort at least. I would've liked to see where they went.

Interesting interview with Ubisoft Canada's boss:

I don't know how much talent THQ managed to lure away from Ubisoft, but I'm sure they're glad to have some of them back.

I reckon that they'll be using the continued existence of the 1666 project as leverage to have Patrice Désilets join the company again.

Turtle Rock has already done at least one and a half year's worth of work on that game, they signed up with THQ for it back in May 2011. The studio itself reformed back in March 2010 after being shut down by Valve, so... maybe the game has been in development ever since then, which means almost 3 years. That would fit with THQ's original plans of the game being released this year.

Very true; I had no idea what the mechanics of the auction were, etc etc etc, nor does it matter, 'cause you're absolutely right -- Volition should be a very good buy. Biggest risk is if they've had significant talent flight due to all the finance fun.

And they thought they were finally free. The poor, poor bastards.

Yes, perhaps I should more say WTF, why did no else try and pick up Volition for a realistic sum given their pedigree

An excellent point and one I overlooked. You are quite correct, if all the assets got was a series of low ball bids, they cumulatively wouldn't top the clearlake bid, and THQ would have continued (minus some pesky debtors)

Sounds like some of the Vigil folks are getting a new lease on life as Crytek USA. I wonder if they'll get to continue on with the ideas from the project codenamed Crawler that Jason Rubin mentioned.

More like have fun working on Homefront 2!

Homefront as a concept had some potential. I hope Crytek pulls it off.

Maximum Mass Grave

Flee to where? Volition is in the middle of nowhere, Indiana.

Crytek is not planning to bid on Darksiders, so that's definitely not what the new studio will be doing. According to the Gamasutra article:

Illinois.. but still the middle of nowhere.. and just down the street from me.

LIke LA... we picked up 2 designers a year ago from volition..

Wait, there are cities in Illinois other than Chicago? Or do you mean they're located in a rural part of Chicago?

According to my ex-volition coworker, supposedly it's located in a college town, so nothing to do but drink.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Sets them up for a career in print journalism if the games industry doesn't work out for them.

We can only hope!

this. but yes, there are other "cities" in Illinois besides Chicago. unfortunately, the rest of the state is just a barren flat wasteland of fields, either full of corn or not, depending on the season. this is why we drink.

You forgot soy beans.

Champaign is nice! There are things I miss after 3 years there.

Mostly the beer, though. Blind Pig is so awesome.

An in-depth look at the collapse of THQ

I think Rubin pretty much nails why they went under. The publisher with good stuff in the bank like Relic/Company of heroes, Volition / Saints Row and even Darksiders should not have struggled as much as they did.

Icarus flew a bit too close to the sun trying to muscle up into the big leagues with I think.

The unpublished MMO is Warhammer 40k right? In the grim dark future there is only corporate failure and squealing ex-ceos avoiding any blame?

Yep:



THQ tried to sell the work done so far but there were no takers...

The wh40k mmo was cancelled for good reason, too. Like ESO, they came out of the gate stepping all over the lore and failed to meet gameplay expectations. THQ gets some respect from me for making the right call on that. And yet, there have been MMOs pushed out the gate in very sorry states that haven't gotten their studios auctioned off, so what does that say about this fucked up industry?

They killed it when they were basically done, stopping the money vacuum after your pockets are empty doesn't make you wise. That and uDraw really killed them.

They still would have had to spend more money on launch, hiring / training customer service, launch marketing and presumably server clusters etc. But yeah, the original bad decision is to even start making a dikuMUD/WoW alike MMO on the WH40K licence in the first place. They already tried it even with Warhammer Fantasy!

The licence is far more suited to something tactics based with out of combat persistent levelling / equipment in a similar vein to Mechwarrior Tactics.

I came on-board Vigil post-DMO, and the overall feel of the studio was, for lack of a better word, sadness. Dave Adams is awesome and incredibly passionate, and we churned out a prototype (code named Crawler) in just 10 weeks. The prototype was incredible, both from an art and gameplay perspective, so it's really too bad nobody wanted it. I'm just glad CryTek stepped up and hired him on as CEO of CryTek Austin, as well as many other core team members. I now work for a different company, and 70+ other comrades-in-arms at Vigil are still out of jobs, but I have a feeling it won't be for long. There's a silver lining, albeit small, but at least the original founding crew is still around. I'm sure the next project they work on will be as excellent as Darksiders.

There's way too much talent from Vigil to let go to waste. For now, though, I'll take a sip of beer from my Darksiders II beer stein, and think of what could have been.

How many studios must you lay to ruin you monster

I know a few people from Vigil, I worked with a couple of them like Maz and Willy(nick name), they helped me a lot when I was new to the industry. I think they started their own studio or something.

Vigil is a solid studio, and I hope everyone there finds new job else where.

ALL OF THEM

Sadly, this has become the nature of the industry, and instead of outliers, we're expected to, well, expect this sort of thing. Something has to give, eventually. The industry can simply not go on as it is.

I thought you were at Spark making a Lost Planet game nobody will play :/

I thought there was still another 12 months before WH40K was ready for the public.

But yes, the two sides and generally shoe-horning of MMO mechanics onto the wargame lore raised a lot of questions.

Hey, I'd have played it. <3 Lost Planet.

Agreed. Do you stay at a studio until it gets shut down, or do you leave before it gets shut down? Those are the only two options.

I'm glad I don't have to make that decision yet, but I'm still young compare to you oldies..