The bankruptcy forced sale of games publisher THQ ended with the company’s assets being divided up at auction. The sum of THQ’s parts turned out to be greater than its whole as the auction sale raised a reported total of close to $100 million in revenue. This beat the high bid for THQ as a whole of $70 million from Clearlake Capital Group which meant that the publisher was sold for parts.

The breakdown of the assets sold, who bought them and the price is as follows:

• Developer Relic Games of Warhammer 40K and Company of Heroes fame were sold to Sega for $26 million
• Volition, developer of the Saints Row and Red Faction series, sold to Koch Media, owner of publisher Deep Silver, for $22.3 million
• Koch Media (Deep Silver) also bought the licence to the Metro game for $5.8 million
• Take-Two Interactive picked up the previously unannounced game Evolve for $11 million
• Ubisoft picked up a paid of assets in the South Park RPG for $3.2 million and the THQ Montreal studio (developers of the in-development 1666 and Underdog) for $2.5 million
• The Homeland franchise was purchased by Crytek who are currently developing Homeland 2 at a price of $500,000

It should also be noted that no bids were made on the Darksiders franchise or developer Vigil Games. The WWE game license also went without a bid being placed on it but a late report said that Take Two’s 2K Sports bought the license outside the auction process after a pre-auction rumour said that EA Sports had acquired the license directly from the WWE. THQ’s publishing arm went unsold. A letter to THQ employees said that employees of unsold assets would be laid off and the businesses closed.

The runner-up bid info was also released. Only one bid was placed on THQ Montreal, Homefront and South Park. Relic nearly ended up in the hands of ZeniMax Media who own Bethesda after their bid fell $300,000 short. Volition also received a $5.4 million bid from Ubisoft which was $16.9 million off the mark. Metro was the other closely contested item up for bid with Koch Media edging out Ubisoft, again, by about $700,000.

For all the talk that EA and Warner Brothers Interactive were going to be big players, especially when it came to Saints Row, they walked away empty-handed. Perhaps the biggest winner on the day was Koch Media / Deep Silver who added two well-known franchises in Saints Row and Metro. Ubisoft didn’t do too badly for itself in adding South Park: The Stick of Truth but I’m interesting in that regardless of publisher.

Sources:
@DDInvesting
Joystiq – THQ bid winners, prices and runners-up
Kotaku – THQ Is No More. Here’s The Letter The CEO Sent Employees Today.