THQ's financial problems have been known for a long time now. They're just now getting around to filing for bankruptcy protection however. THQ agreed to sell its assets to investor Clearlake for $60M in a quick bankruptcy sale. Anyone else who wants to bid to buy THQ can, but they only have 30 days. Turns out THQ's lenders are pretty piqued about the sale though, stating it is only benefitting the company's newest executives and some of their friends at a financial firm in an objection filing to the sale.
Though Clearlake may essentially save THQ's game development teams, the lenders see it as financially more beneficial to them to sell off the intellectual property one at a time, to whoever wants to buy them. THQ's properties include sandbox game Saints Row, Darksiders, apocalyptic shooter Metro, near-future first-person shooter Homefront, and World War II real-time strategy series Company of Heroes. They also own the rights to create games based off WWE and South Park, according to VentureBeat.
One has to wonder about the future of these franchises, but if Clearlake intends to keep THQ as it is, it may be for the best as far as the games go. Selling off IPs piecemeal could end up with some really different sequels to well-known games, as we've seen in the past. We can only hope that in the end, the game developers and games come out on top.
