THQ Sale Approved, Vigil Designer Says Farewell
Posted by Adam Larck on 01.24.2013
'Back catalog' of games to be sold later.
It's official, THQ is no more.
The U.S. Bankruptcy Court approved the sale of assets today to Sega, Crytek, Koch Media and more. Overall, the proceeds from the sale were $72 million, making it a total of $100 million when remaining assets are added in.
"While we had hoped that the restructuring process would allow the company to remain intact, I am heartened that the majority of our studios and games will continue under new ownership," CEO Brian Farrell said in a press release.
Ben Cureton, the lead combat designer at Vigil Games, which wasn't acquired by a company, had some parting words as employees were let go yesterday.
"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," he said. "Why? Did we do something wrong? Were we not good enough? Were we not worth 'anything?' Imagine that."
He added that a project the studio was working on, Crawler, was already blowing people away and may not every see the light of day now.
"I knew, without a shadow of the doubt, that the project we were working on (Codenamed: Crawler) was going to blow people away," Cureton said." 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 percent every single day, even through the dark times."
He added with a thank you to fans of the studio before turning off the lights.
"In closing, I can only say thank you to the fans of Vigil games," Cureton said. "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 and 2... and you are the reason we will continue to make games.
"And with that... my seat is empty."
THQ's story still isn't quite finished, though, some of the IPs that weren't sold, such as Darksiders, will be sold at a later date.
"There will be a separate process to sell off the back catalog and IP," THQ president Jason Rubin said to Game Informer. "That process will take place in the coming weeks."
