Vigil Games Unsold; Is Platinum Buying Darksiders?

Vigil Games was one of the few studios left without a buyer after the THQ auction, tossing the future of the Darksiders franchise up in the air.

Lead Combat Designer at Vigil Games Ben Cureton posted a letter on the NeoGAF forums expressing his dismay at the situation. Meanwhile the head of Platinum Games may be contemplating buying the Darksiders franchise.

Ben Cureton Saying Goodbye

Cureton’s post on NeoGAF gives a realistic look at the situation at THQ (and by extension Vigil Games).

My name is Ben Cureton, and I was the Lead Combat Designer at Vigil Games. I’m sitting at my desk among… what appears to be a warzone. The walls look bare. It’s quiet.

The seats are empty.

He continues, speaking on how he will miss the Vigil team and how it felt being looked over in the auction.

Not that it was perfect. But what is perfect? Did I like coming to work? Yes. Was I proud of the work that I did? Yes. More importantly, was I proud of the work that WE did? Absolutely. […]

… so maybe you can imagine what it feels like when you read the list of who bought what only to discover your name is not on the list. Why? Did we do something wrong? Were we not good enough? Were we not worth ‘anything?’ Imagine that.

Vigil was filled with people that I would put up against the best in the industry. People that made my work better, people that made me a better designer, and people that made me a better person. And now they are gone.

Their seats are empty.

It’s sad to see the team over at Vigil Games have to split up. The Darksiders games were both popular, though Darksiders 2 did not meet up to THQ’s sales expectations. It naturally hit hard to hear that he and the rest of his team would not be taken under the wing of another company.

The rest of the letter is lengthy, but is well-worth a read even if you personally did not care for the games Ben Cureton worked on. The circumstances behind THQ’s sale and subsequent studio losses are by no means a norm in the industry. It’s sad to see these people lose their jobs, and we here at GameSkinny wish them the best in their future endeavors.

What Happens to Darksiders?

The Darksiders IP is relatively fresh, considering there have only been two games in the series. With no one actively seeking Vigil, the IP itself is without a home — which is something a certain development studio across the Pacific may be looking to alleviate.

Head of Platinum Games Atsushi Inaba posted on his Twitter, expressing a vague want for the Darksiders franchise. The tweet reads (translated by myself):

“Darksiders is seriously left over from the THQ studio and IP sale? We’d like to buy it… cheaply…”

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The prospect of the franchise living on is pretty nice, but it’s hard to not to correlate Platinum Games with over-the-top action games. Would something a bit slower and less “curazaaaay” really be down their alley? Who knows. We might not ever know if Inaba doesn’t decide to grab it up.