Looking back, on November 13, 2012, THQ reported that they had defaulted on a $50 million loan from Wells Fargo and were on the verge of bankruptcy, and in about 70 days time the brand as we know it has been auctioned off to many different suitors. The company had initially planned a restructuring phase about 8 months back when nothing was going right for the them, but unfortunately they could not keep the ship sailing.
Though THQ estate will still make about a $100 million from the sale of its assets, primarily IPs and studios. According to Distressed Debt Investing on Twitter, few of the company’s assets were sold as follows:
- Relic – purchased by Sega for $26 million
- Volition – purchased by Koch Media for $22.3 million
- Evolve (IP) – purchased by Take-Two for $11 million
- Metro (IP) – purchased by Koch Media for $5.8 million
- South Park (IP) – purchased by Ubisoft for $3.2 million
- THQ Montreal – purchased by Ubisoft for $2.5 million
- Homefront (IP) – purchased by Crytek for $500,000
THQ’s 21 studios worldwide have been totally closed down; and most of the employees from the sold divisions will probably be given jobs with the new owners, but terms of employment may or may not be same.
However, there is still good news from the game titles point of view, as per company CEO Brian Farrell, the majority of studios and games will continue under new ownership. So we can be optimistic about many of the previously promised titles.
Source: Kotaku, Distressed Debt Investing
