Platinum Games Interested in Vigil Games

After the initial excitement of the Nintendo Direct presentation wore off, the day took a major turn for the worse as news of THQ's auction swept the video game news world, with the once profitable publisher being forced to sell off all its major IPs and developers in an effort to recoup as much of the money they owed to creditors as possible. And while many developers — from Relic Entertainment to Volition — ended up at new homes, there were still plenty of jobs lost in the process.

Among those unfortunate casualties in the shuddering of THQ was Darksiders 2 developer Vigil Games, who was not picked up in the auction proper. It didn't spell outright doom for the company at the time, however a public letter from Lead Combat Designer Ben Cureton suggests things are looking grim for the developer.

In the letter Cureton paints a bleak picture of a developer that has been gutted, where all that remains are empty chairs. For anyone that enjoyed either Darksiders 1 or 2 — both great games with their own unique style and gameplay — it's pretty heartbreaking, and makes one wish some benevolent publisher would swoop in to save them.

Who could that knight in shining white armor be you ask? Well, we still don’t have any official news to report, but it appears Bayonetta and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance developer Platinum Games might be interested in acquiring Vigil.

After hearing that Vigil was not sold as part of the THQ auction, Platinum Games' head Atsushi Inaba took to Twitter to say:

 "In THQ studio and IP selling off auction, Darksiders is unsold? [We] wanna buy it...on the cheap..."

Now unfortunately, Inaba only mentions the Darksiders IP and not Vigil, but our hope is that if they pursue such a purchase that Platinum will take both. There are elements to a typical Platinum Games title that could fit right into the Darksiders universe, but that doesn't necessarily mean Vigil needs to be involved.

As well, the "on the cheap" phrasing could be interpreted more as a joke than a serious offer. Now that the IP has bypassed the auction process it will indeed be relatively "cheap" to acquire — meaning anyone from EA to Activision could scoop it up.

For now, though, Darksiders and Vigil Games are stuck having to accept their fate, one that we have seen befall many publishers over the past 365 days. But as many of those developers were saved, we hope that Vigil too can be thrown a lifeline.

Would you like to see Vigil Games end up a subsidiary of Platinum Games? Do you think Darksiders is a good fit at Platinum?

-

Source: Atsushi Inaba — Twitter (via Kotaku)