One of the big unanswered questions when THQ’s assets were auctioned off last week was “what’s happening to Vigil Games?” The hyenas didn’t even bother to bid on the studio behind the Darksiders series, leaving it to rot, untouched and unloved.
Well, it’s seems that Crytek, who snapped up the Homefront series at auction for a meager half-million, will be Vigil Games’ savoir. Well, sort of. Vigil has been allowed to close, but Crytek has opened up a new studio, Crytek USA, in Austin, Texas (the former home of Vigil) and hired most of Vigil’s core members. Crytek will not, however, be purchasing the Darksiders series.
So, there you have it — Crytek has come out of this situation looking like pretty savvy bastards. First they get the Homefront series for a steal, then rather than outright buying Vigil, they let them go out of business, then bought them a new building and let them move their stuff in. Bam, Crytek’s got themselves a new franchise and studio for probably less than a million bucks.
via IGN
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Clever girl. I sure hope someone buys Darksiders. I hope someone still has it to sell…
I understand that Homefront cost more then $500K to make but if anyone ever played the game; why would you ever touch that franchise again? It was a pretty terrible game which got them sued over a stupid advert that killed sea life or something. im just mad I wasted those five hours beating the game i guess.
Well, it still sold over a couple million, and Crytek can probably make the series into something decent if they want — either way, it was worth more than half-a-million.
Glad for the guys at Vigil, they seem like a solid staff. Still bummed no one has bought Darksiders. I still think there’s potential there.
I’m curious as to what this means for Crawler, their next game.
You’ll have to run that one by me again. If they’d bid in the auction, they could have had three times as many employees, the IP to Darksiders, the IP to Crawler, and an established studio space with all the hardware and software licensing already set to go. Instead, a huge chunk of ex-Vigil folks are still unemployed, and they’ve been doubly punched in the gut after not having been bought at auction or handpicked by Dave Adams to head over to Crytek USA.
Savvy, no. Bastards? Yes.
I actually enjoyed Homefront quite a bit. There were certainly quite a few gameplay issues, but I found the story to be interesting enough and the multiplayer was well above average.