THQ

» see thq.com as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the obit ~

in 2012 i was four years into edge ai work and not really following the console-game publishing tier. thq was a logo on the back of cracked ps2 boxes i had seen in lan-cafe inventories around 2003-2005, mostly wwe smackdown vs raw and the wrestling-game line. by the time the company filed chapter 11 on december 19 2012 my radar had moved on. but it was a real death of a real publisher with a billion-dollar peak.

thq was founded in april 1990 in calabasas by jack friedman. the name stood for toy headquarters. the first few years were action-figure manufacturing tied to the wwf and other licensing partners. by 1994 the toy side had been wound down and the company was a full video-game publisher. it went public in 1991 through a reverse merger and grew on the back of licensed kids titles plus the wwe series through the 1990s.

peak was the fiscal year 2007 annual report with revenues over one billion dollars and the highest net profit in company history. the catalog by then included saints row, the wwe line, the darksiders rpg-action series, red faction, mx vs atv, and a deep nickelodeon kid-show tie-in roster. the development studios under thq included relic in vancouver, vigil in austin, kaos in new york, and volition in champaign-urbana. the ip and studio depth across that roster is what made the post-bankruptcy auction worth bidding on.

the udraw drawing tablet shipped in 2010 as a peripheral for the wii. it sold well enough that thq backed an hd version for ps3 and xbox 360 in 2011, betting that the format would extend its life across platforms. the hd version was a commercial failure. thq wrote down 100 million dollars on udraw inventory at the end of 2011 and the company never financially recovered. homefront, the modern-shooter ip thq had bought as its call-of-duty alternative, also underperformed at launch in march 2011.

thq filed chapter 11 on december 19 2012. the asset auction on january 23 2013 split the catalog across half a dozen buyers. koch media's deep silver got saints row and the metro shooter line for 26 million dollars. sega picked up relic in vancouver plus the warhammer 40,000 rts license. take-two interactive walked away with the wwe games license that it still holds in 2026. ubisoft got the south park: stick of truth project that was already deep in development at obsidian. nordic games bought what was left of the catalog for 4.9 million dollars and rebranded itself thq nordic in 2016.

~ the rap sheet ~

~ the udraw bet ~

udraw was a stylus-and-tablet peripheral with a docked screen surface, sold as a bundled package with a drawing-instructor game for the wii. the 2010 release moved 1.7 million units in its first holiday quarter, and that number convinced thq's board to greenlight an hd port for the higher-end consoles. the ps3 and 360 versions hit shelves in november 2011. the audience for a drawing peripheral on those platforms turned out to be very small. retail returns came back faster than thq's accounting could absorb them. the 100 million dollar writedown announced in february 2012 was the moment the company became un-restructurable without a bankruptcy.

~ the thq nordic afterlife ~

nordic games, originally based in karlstad and vienna, had been buying secondary game ip out of bankruptcy estates since 2011. the thq purchase in 2013 was a much bigger bite than its previous catalog acquisitions. the rebrand to thq nordic in 2016 was the moment the swedish company decided to keep the dead american brand alive as its publishing label. it has since shipped darksiders sequels and kingdoms of amalur re-releases under the name, plus a long tail of niche revivals.

~ what got buried with it ~

the studios survived in pieces. relic still ships company of heroes games under sega. volition kept shipping saints row at deep silver until embracer group shut the studio down in august 2023. obsidian, which picked up south park stick of truth from ubisoft, later shipped pillars of eternity and the outer worlds. the thq brand also survived in a sense under a different swedish parent. the thing that did not survive was thq as a mid-tier american publisher with a billion-dollar revenue line.

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