Two large game publishers have exchanged some of their intellectual properties, leading to game franchises changing hands between Koch Media and THQ Nordic. Risen, Sacred, Rush for Berlin, Second Sight, and Singles: Flirt Up Your Life will be now be owned by THQ Nordic, in exchange for Red Faction and Painkiller, which now belong to Koch. The trade allows for some older games to go back to their original developers, such is the case with Red Faction, which was originally created by Volition, a subsidiary of Koch Media, and Risen, which has returned to THQ Nordic's studio Piranha Bytes, also the creator of that franchise.

Risen, Sacred, Rush for Berlin, Second Sight and Singles: Flirt Up Your Life will join THQ Nordic’s treasure cove of publishing IPs
Red Faction and Painkiller will become part of Koch Media’s publishing portfolio

Vienna, AUSTRIA, May 5h, 2020 – Just because several sports leagues have to take an understandable break from their daily business, there is still room for news on the international transfer market of intellectual properties: THQ Nordic and Koch Media today set up shop for swapping publishing rights for some of their respective intellectual properties.

• From Koch Media to THQ Nordic: Risen, Sacred, Rush for Berlin, Second Sight and Singles: Flirt Up Your Life

The warmest of welcomes to Risen, (now THQ Nordic unifies all Piranha Bytes titles under one roof), Sacred (some of us invested more time than they would like to admit), Rush for Berlin, Second Sight and Singles: Flirt Up your Life. Evaluations on remasters, ports, potential sequels & new content etc. will start right away. We have something in mind already.

• From THQ Nordic to Koch Media: Red Faction, Painkiller

Farewell, Painkiller!

Hell & Damnation was just an all around awesome project to work on. It is hard to believe that it was already 8 years ago for Daniel Garner and actually marked our (then: Nordic Games) first big title. What we had was truly special and although we made a lot of mistakes, we also did a lot of really awesome stuff when we published you. Unfortunately, though, today marks the day where we will let you go. We know you will get a lot of love in your new home.



Farewell, Red Faction!

We loved working on Re-Mars-tered (yes, we do have a certain reputation for corny names for remasters, and we are damn proud of it), but the time has come to put our sledgehammers on the shelf. Live long and prosper!



About Risen

Risen is a third-person action RPG created by Piranha Bytes. Risen is considered a spiritual successor to the Gothic series, and a spiritual predecessor of ELEX



About Sacred

The Sacred series is a hack and slash RPG series and is reminiscent of Diablo. Same concept: level, loot, perfecting your character.



About Rush for Berlin

Rush for Berlin is a real-time tactics game set in World War II. In the contest for the German capital Berlin, the player must fight with the American, British, French, and Soviet armies.



About Second Sight

Second Sight is a science fiction action-adventure stealth video game, featuring a protagonist with memory of their past and psychic abilities.



About Singles: Flirt Up Your Life

Singles: Flirt Up Your Life is a Life (and love life) simulation game from the early 2000s.


Next Steps for the Gothic Remake

THQ Nordic will establish a new studio based in Barcelona, Spain, and will then assess what players liked and what they want to be different than in the playable teaser. One of the most common mentions was for example the demand for a grittier and less colourful world.

Here is an example of how this could be tweaked:



"We are up for the challenge to develop a full Gothic Remake which will stay as faithfully as possible to the original experience and transport the atmospheric world of Gothic into a high quality look and carefully modernizing certain gameplay mechanics." says Reinhard Pollice Business and Product Development Director at THQ Nordic.



The full Gothic Remake will go into production and will be developed for PC and next gen consoles. There is no release window available yet, but it will not be coming in 2020.

Source

 

[FAST6191]

Is Koch Media a developer or publisher? Because I was looking at Saints Row 4 yesterday on the eshop, and it said "Koch Media" but I thought the saints row games were made by Volition or Deep Silver?

That is something of a rabbit hole

Between buyouts (THQ's bankruptcy saw the name and a bunch of devs and IP, including Volition, change hands. Since 2018 Koch media themselves now find themselves under the embracer group who were formerly known a Nordic games way back when and then various takes on THQ Nordic after that until late last year, though something called THQ Nordic still exists), time (at various points the answer to that question changes), variously independent subdivisions (Deep Silver is one of them) kept around for name recognition and presumably because the do good work, and even more bankruptcy fun the answer is kind of yes, though mostly a publisher even if they arguably have more devs under their umbrella than most straight up developers. Few people have talked much about the internal politics of it all (good or bad, or indeed how truly independent each division really is or whether they are being fattened up for sale) that I have seen thus far so not all that much is known. One to keep an eye on though as something fun is bound to happen at some point; don't know if it will be buyout by someone like ubisoft or square, buyout from a Chinese company, buyout from a Korean company, buyout by someone like Epic, merger with any of those mentioned, them buying another out if something like ubisoft goes pop, they themselves going pop, or further acquisitions and ascending to be another big name in third party game publishing like Ubisoft, EA, Square or the like.

To that end you quite possibly did see koch media as the listed publisher, especially if they were the ones to reissue the game or that port of it.

Indeed just looked it up
https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/saints-row-iv-re-elected-switch/

©2020 and published by Deep Silver, a division of Koch Media GmbH, Austria. Developed by Deep Silver Fishlabs. Developed by Deep Silver Volition, Inc. Uses Bink Video. Copyright © 1997-2020 by RAD Game Tools, Inc. Adult Swim, the logo, DELOCATED, and all related characters and elements are TM of and © Cartoon Network. Saints Row: The Third uses Havok™. Havok software is © 2020 Microsoft. All rights reserved. DTS, the Symbol, and DTS and the Symbol together are registered trademarks of DTS, Inc. and all other DTS logos are trademarks of DTS, Inc. Portions of this software utilize SpeedTree®RT Technology (© 2004-2020 Interactive Data Visualization, Inc.). SpeedTree® is a registered trademark of IDV, Inc. All rights reserved. Powered by Wwise © 2006 – 2020 Audiokinetic Inc. All rights reserved. © 2020 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. All rights reserved. AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, Radeon and combinations thereof are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Deep Silver, Saints Row, Volition and its respective logos are trademarks of Koch Media GmbH. All other trademarks, logos and copyrights are property of their respective owners. All Rights Reserved.

Quite an amusing list of companies there with some rather odd pairings, all to work on an ARM powered Nintendo device.

 

[campbell0505]

That is something of a rabbit hole

Between buyouts (THQ's bankruptcy saw the name and a bunch of devs and IP, including Volition, change hands. Since 2018 Koch media themselves now find themselves under the embracer group who were formerly known a Nordic games way back when and then various takes on THQ Nordic after that until late last year, though something called THQ Nordic still exists), time (at various points the answer to that question changes), variously independent subdivisions (Deep Silver is one of them) kept around for name recognition and presumably because the do good work, and even more bankruptcy fun the answer is kind of yes, though mostly a publisher even if they arguably have more devs under their umbrella than most straight up developers. Few people have talked much about the internal politics of it all (good or bad, or indeed how truly independent each division really is or whether they are being fattened up for sale) that I have seen thus far so not all that much is known. One to keep an eye on though as something fun is bound to happen at some point; don't know if it will be buyout by someone like ubisoft or square, buyout from a Chinese company, buyout from a Korean company, buyout by someone like Epic, merger with any of those mentioned, them buying another out if something like ubisoft goes pop, they themselves going pop, or further acquisitions and ascending to be another big name in third party game publishing like Ubisoft, EA, Square or the like.

To that end you quite possibly did see koch media as the listed publisher, especially if they were the ones to reissue the game or that port of it.

Indeed just looked it up
https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/saints-row-iv-re-elected-switch/


Quite an amusing list of companies there with some rather odd pairings, all to work on an ARM powered Nintendo device.

Damn, you went pretty indepth, thanks for this. I knew THQ Nordic wasn't the old THQ, but just the THQ name for recognition, but I didn't really know much of the other stuff. I never thought there would be this much just for Koch Media.

 

[FAST6191]

Damn, you went pretty indepth, thanks for this. I knew THQ Nordic wasn't the old THQ, but just the THQ name for recognition, but I didn't really know much of the other stuff. I never thought there would be this much just for Koch Media.

To be fair I don't think I have ever seen something quite as complicated as the whole Nordic-Embracer-Koch Media parading around in THQ's skin setup before in games. In other industries then complicated holding company arrangements is par for the course but not really in games -- in games you tend to either be an underling (with the possible exception of the lord of lies himself, that being Peter Molyneux, has anybody Microsoft ever bought in ascended up the ranks?) to maybe be sold in a few years more or less intact (or if you go bankrupt then shield the parent company from serious loss) or be consumed (see EA* and maybe ubisoft).

*so you are a small dev with a surprise big hit, or ex devs of something big going out on your own, you get tapped to work on some EA game with them just as a publisher. It might go quite well (certainly several have said they were decent projects), that works and your management sees EA rock up with the proverbial dumper truck of cash, you now work for EA with no real option to do what you like and will be driven into the ground over the next few years making increasingly weak sequels or sequels to their current popular franchise whereupon you will be shuttered but courtesy of your last 5 games being junk nobody will care, or maybe you will get a cult following but still be shuttered.

I am still trying to parse what this press release means as well, indeed that it even is a press release means they probably care more about getting some press (it would have been nothing at all to sublicense the IP and still have the original devs work on "their" old franchise). I could look at accounts (though they are probably not too public) but all I am likely to see there is some accountant being paid an awful lot to price the various IPs to avoid taxes (different countries have different regs here but sometimes IP can be priced low despite being worth millions), create a loss to write off if that is beneficial, balance books in case it seems to just be an order from on high if it does come time to sell a subdivision and so on.
It could also be them being benevolent -- happy underlings is a nice thing to have.