South Park - Sold to Ubisoft

It seems the rumours were true and Ubisoft has purchased the publishing rights for South Park: The Stick of Truth from the now-defunct THQ. No word on the objection from South Park Digital Studios but Kotaku has a letter from THQ bosses Brian Farrell and Jason Rubin:

To All THQ Employees:
We now have the answers we've been seeking through our financial restructuring and
Chapter 11 case. While much will be written, here are the facts of the bids and auction
that occurred t:

• Yesterday morning, we received a competing bid for the operating business,
  along with Clearlake's offer, and numerous offers for separate assets.
• During an auction process that lasted over 22 hours, the final conclusion was
  that the separate-asset bids would net more than a single buyer for the majority
  of the company.
• Shortly, we will, present the results to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, which must
  concur with our assessment.
• The proposed sales of multiple assets is as follows :
• Sega agreed to purchase Relic
• Koch Media agreed to purchase Volition and Metro
• Crytek agreed to purchase Homefront
• Take 2 agreed purchase Evolve and
• Ubisoft agreed to purchase Montreal and South Park

We expect these sales to close this week.

More information.

To quote William Shakespeare -

Good-night, sweet prince;
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

Appropriate bittersweet and all due to mismanagement of the company. Hopefully the new owners don't destroy the studios and Ip's.

Here is what the assets sold for-

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

Link-http://www.escapistmagazine.com/foru…ction-Ends-THQ

Bummer.

This is the second worst thing to happen, next to a STEAM only release.

I was fond of UBI a long time ago, but since they jumped the crappy DRM bandwagon they didn't get a dime from me.

Hope this won't feature U-Play.

*sigh* It must feel bad to work for Obsidian be be screwed over and over again.

I have not purchased a ubisoft game since the on-line always drm; but people are saying ubi-soft has learned a lesson and the newer games are not requiring that drm (folks seem pretty happy with farcry 3). Also I think there was a news bit somewhere yesterday that south park is claiming that thq did not have the right to sell the ip to ubisoft.
-
btw I am a heavy steam user and while it is not perfect I really don't have any complaints about it; i do have major complaints with the drm in dragon age as well as origin and gwfl

Originally Posted by Sir_Brennus
Hope this won't feature U-Play.

Abandon every hope. It will feature uPlay.

IMO uPlay is definetly the worst DRM out there, but still it isn't the worst possible one. Also, if the game is good, somehow you adapt to it, at least I did. It still feels as an annoyance, but not as a huge one. That also means I'll buy Stick of Truth no matter who bought the publishing rights.

We may only hope that some day Ubisoft will realize that huge sales of FarCry3 happened because it's a great game and not because of the draconic DRM.

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
South Park (IP) - purchased by Ubisoft for $3.2 million

THQ never owned the South Park IP. They owned the publishing rights to a Stick of Truth. Although, if they made it look like they owned the IP that would explain the lawsuit by South Park Studio.

Relic going to Sega is weird. Not the match I expected to see.

Ubi taking THQ Montréal is funny (but expected). A lot of THQ employes are probably ex-Ubi.

Originally Posted by azarhal
Ubi taking THQ Montréal is funny (but expected). A lot of THQ employes are probably ex-Ubi.

You sure? IIRC alot of them were ex-Eidos.

Ubisoft certainly wouldn't have been my first choice, but at least the game will get released assuming it's not blocked by South Park Studios.

I think Ubisoft declared not long ago that they would not include the stupid DRM in their games anymore (not necessarily retroactive to previous games)

Originally Posted by wolfing
I think Ubisoft declared not long ago that they would not include the stupid DRM in their games anymore (not necessarily retroactive to previous games)

I don't care about DRM, I just don't want Ubisoft having any kind of influence on the game itself. Hopefully, that won't be an issue here since The Stick of Truth is already pretty much finished.

Ubisoft's DRM is now relatively benign (one time activation, no disk required after installation). You do have the slightly annoying Uplay client but you can set it to play offline only, turn off all the malfunctioning crap like save syncing and its not too bad. Some of the older games also have the always on DRM patched out (PoP Forgotten Sands and AC2 were two recent ones I played).

Originally Posted by joxer
You sure? IIRC alot of them were ex-Eidos.

Patrice Desilets, the mind behind the Assassin's Creed franchise left Ubisoft after Assassin's Creed 2. He went to THQ to make a new IP for them. Now he is back with UBI, as they bought THQ Montreal

Originally Posted by joxer
You sure? IIRC alot of them were ex-Eidos.

I did write probably, I know of at least one guy who is ex-Ubisoft that work for THQ Montréal. But I do know that a lot of (ex-)Eidos employes are ex-Ubisoft.

Ubi is supposedly dropping most of their DRM bs. Hopefully it's true.

"Relic going to Sega is weird. Not the match I expected to see."
Most think it has something to do with Sega's recent plan to make a Creative Assembly Warhammer Fantasy game. Sega may be trying to gather all the Warhammer eggs into its basket. I'd also point out that Sega's ownership of CA is a pretty good sign for how they could deal with Relic. Hopefully.

deleted

I wasn't surprised with Ubisoft picking up THQ Montreal, it fits perfectly with the French connection.

Just say no to Ubi. When they remove any and online requirements for HoMM someone let me know.


-Carn

Originally Posted by killias2
"Relic going to Sega is weird. Not the match I expected to see."
Most think it has something to do with Sega's recent plan to make a Creative Assembly Warhammer Fantasy game. Sega may be trying to gather all the Warhammer eggs into its basket. I'd also point out that Sega's ownership of CA is a pretty good sign for how they could deal with Relic. Hopefully.

I didn't know Sega was using the Warhammer IP, makes more sense now.

Originally Posted by azarhal
I didn't know Sega was using the Warhammer IP, makes more sense now.

It was announced last month Sega acquired the rights. Creative Assembly is developing a new fantasy warhammer game. More news will be avaible later Sega said sometime after 2013. Rome 2 is there main focus right now.

I believe SEGA had acquired the rights to the regular/fantasy Warhammer IP. And Creative Assembly was going to work on it.

Relic/THQ had the rights to Warhammer 40k. Now SEGA owns the right to publish both IP.