THQ will soon be a distant memory, as the company has confirmed its last remaining assets are going on the market. It's certainly a sad day to see such a long lived studio and publisher disappear completely, but hopefully this will mean that its games will end up in good hands.
Most of THQ's assets, including their larger franchises and subsidiary studios, were sold off in January to studios such as Crytek, Sega, Take-Two Interactive, Koch Media, and Ubisoft.
However, a number of titles including Darksiders, Red Faction, Homeworld, MX, Summoner, Destroy All Humans!, Big Beach Sports, Marvel Super Hero Squad, Supreme Commander, and Worms were untouched, leaving many to wonder how they would be handled.
This was especially worrying for the larger series, such as Darksiders, who still have a fairly active fan base. As no buyer had come up in the initial sale, would these games just disappear entirely?
Luckily, it looks like all of those properties will be given a second chance to find a new home with another round of bidding. According to THQ, they will now be auctioned off piecemeal to interested parties over the next few months. Companies that wish to bid on these franchises need to submit their initial bids by April 1st, with final bids due on the 15th. The sales will then be submitted to the courts for final approval sometime in May.
However, if no one steps up to purchase the titles, it's still unclear what will happen. For some of the smaller names especially, it seems unlikely that a larger publisher would be willing to shell out money for the rights. THQ is also in the final stages of shutting down, so one can imagine that it soon won't have the personnel to carry on any more of these transactions.