Gearbox wins bidding for Homeworld IP
After learning late last week that teamPixel did not get the Homeworld franchise in the THQ bankruptcy auction, we learn today that Gearbox Software was the winning bidder.
After learning late last week that teamPixel did not get the Homeworld franchise in the THQ bankruptcy auction, we learn today that Gearbox Software was the winning bidder, with the company's chief creative officer Brian Martel spearheading the acquisition.
"Brian intends as first priority to direct Gearbox's interest to preserve and assemble the purest form of the original acclaimed and beloved games, Homeworld and Homeworld 2, with the intent of making them accessible on today's leading digital platforms," the company said on its website.
The company has already opened up forums for fans to discuss a Homeworld 3 and what they want to see done with the franchise. One thing is for certain is that fans will want to see the series brought up to date for today's computers and made available on sites like GOG.com, given the recently invigorated desire for old school games.
The bid won't become official until approved by the court on May 13, but a rejection appears unlikely. According to a release, Gearbox paid $1.35 million for the IP.
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Shacknews
replyJohn Keefer posted a new article, Gearbox wins bidding for Homeworld IP.
After learning late last week that teamPixel did not get the Homeworld franchise in the THQ bankruptcy auction, we learn today that Gearbox Software was the winning bidder.-
Great! Just the news I DIDNT want to hear. So who's it being outsourced to?
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Derek Smart
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Clifford Blazingsky
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Goddamit. Here comes Homeworld 3: Rushed Out The Door (featuring a season of DLC!)
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1. Buy HomeWorld
2. Take source code and modify so it works on modern computers
3. Release HW1 and HW2 on digital platforms as separate and a discount package together.
4. Profit. Collect money for basically nothing.
5. ?????????????
6. Release new HW3 game........ just kidding!-
Honestly THQ should have put HW1 & HW2 on GOG in the first place. Failing to do simple shit like that is probably part of why they went down the tubes.
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That would have been great but stuff like that is a drop in the bucket compared to uDraw
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Yep but at the same time it does show how far their heads were planted when they couldn't even get the no brainer stuff done.
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There goes any chance that any future Homeworld game will ever have mod tools :(
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I dunno. EA could likely make a good game with it, with an online requirement. Certainly I enjoy a lot of their original IPs such as Dead Space and such. Gearbox will just turn it into a shitty game.
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Well, since sega funded the extended development of the borderlands series, that's not hard to understand. Will they do the same for homeland? Or will they half ass it and outsource it to someone else as they did with numerous other games? I highly suspect that they will not do the series justice.
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Is that sega story legit?
If that really happened Gearbox would have a massive lawsuit on their hands.
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And neither of them are that great IMO. They get a lot of love around here but I found them both pretty shallow. I finished the first one, got about 10 hours into the second and never went back.
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I don't get the love for the coop either. It's not like there are any cool mechanics that come into play with more people, just just the same shit with someone else there. I tried it for a while but it didn't improve my enjoyment of the game.
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I agree. I think part of it might be the loot aspect. In order to get you to lust after better guns they have to saddle you with utter garbage at least for the early partof the game.
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,,,Wait, the first one here is Half-Life, Opposing Force, right?
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LOL, "literally". Gamers' attention spans are so short. Let's see, Opposing Force, Halo PC, Brothers in Arms 1/2/3, Borderlands 1/2, yeah that's like 6 or 7 right there off the top of my head. All of which, your personal opinions aside, were considered by critical and user consensus to be at least "decent".
It's just the in thing to despise Gearbox now because of Duke and Colonial Marines. Yeah, those games sucked (apparently - I don't buy games that the reviews say suck so I wouldn't know firsthand). But this pretending they're the worst studio ever with almost nothing but a record of failure is just revisionism, not to mention that a lot of the work on those two games wasn't even done by Gearbox.
No, they haven't produced a classic on par with BioShock, or (fill in your favorite game here). So what. Very few studios have.
FWIW I think Gearbox is a really awkward fit for the Homeworld franchise and that the series should be with Relic where it belongs. But this Gearbox hysteria is getting a bit much these days.-
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Halo pc was as bad a port as A:CM is a bad game.
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Also borderlands 1 was not a good game. BL2 might be, but BL1 left such a mediocre bland taste in my mouth it killed any interest in later installments
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I, too, think BL2 should be the metric for what GBX can do and not A:CM, but to be fair there's nothing preventing that from happening again (GBX outsources the work to someone sub-par and releases the result anyway)
I'm a big Gearbox defender on here but even I'll admit they fucked themselves there - they released something awesome with BL2 and completely flushed that goodwill down the drain with A:CM-
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'Well gearbox made a mediocre FPS game, then followed with an ok update, yeah, they released horrid shit before both of those games but thats alright they can do wonders with this RTS classic'.
Excite.-
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Someone take "BULLSHIT!" guy from the Angry Joe review of Aliens: Colonial Marines, and put it on infinite loop.
If they're serious about this, Gearbox has a lot of work to do to heal their public reputation. Your move, sTeve, Maarten, and Faylor. -
http://www.shacknews.com/chatty?id=30049300#item_30049300
All hope lost :( -
whoa. well this is not what i would call good news. the most i want to see from HW now is perhaps a graphically and technically updated remake targetted towards compatibility to be released on DD. after that, I hope and pray that GB just lets the IP rot, because oh my fucking god there is no developer i would have less faith in to make a new HW game.
maybe if they remake them they wont sell well enough to encourage a new game, and they will sit on it a few more years and someone competent can buy the IP. its a catch 22 for HW fans though. if we buy a re-release it encourage the suits to crank out a HW3 with Randy bleating on about how its a true and honest passion project for Homeworld fans blah blah, or just not buy it and keep waxing them old disks. -
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I don't think Gearbox does a bad job with the games they've actually done in-house, but there's definitely not a lot of evidence to support the idea that they can produce a game of this nature.
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Maarten's got this shit under control y'all. Just chill out and wait for the wolf to arrive shortly.
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I will just quote what I said in the GBX forums thread suggesting Linux(and Mac) versions of the games:
"Why not? Don't ask me! I am all for it and think it makes a lot of sense but Gearbox as a company probably won't do it. They are one of the most "corporate" companies in the industry. No mod tools, no free DLC, no Linux versions, no source code releases for old games(but to be fair they probably don't have the right to do that for any of their old games). They don't do any of those things.
They may as well be one of those big, publicly listed publishers when it comes to those sort of things. You won't see a Linux version of a Gearbox game just as you won't see a Linux version of a Activision game or an EA game.
If Gearbox were to be acquired by Activision nothing would change, all the changes people would usually be worried about already apply to Gearbox as a company. They already operate in that manner." -
well shit, that's not good news.
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Condolences to all Homeworld fans.
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Homeworld RIP
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they should hire you as a HW3 creative consultant
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Here are the results for the rest of THQ's IPs:
http://www.shacknews.com/article/78852/nordic-games-picks-up-darksiders-red-faction-and-more-from
Short summary: Nordic Games picks up pretty much everything. -
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NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! YOU BETTER NOT FUCK THIS UP! I SWEAR TO FUCK I WILL MAKE YOU ALL WISH BURCH'S SISTER WAS TINA TINA PLAYING WITH WET DYNAMITE SLOWLY DANGLING AND DRIPPING OVER YOU AND YOURS! UPDATE THEM FOR DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION AND THEN KEEP YOUR FILTHY DUKE NUKEM FOREVER ALIEN COLONIAL MARINES STAINED NEVER TOUCHED AN RTS HANDS OFF HIIGARA!!!!!!!!! YOU FUCKING HEAR ME PICHFORD!????
/mace-
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I said "like responsible custodians," prefacing it with my acknowledgment that they are not. Also, regarding XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Firaxis has years of experience making successful strategy games. Gearbox has had occasional hits and some extreme misses over their entire history, and only make first person shooters.
Every single one of their games, success or failure, are FPS games. On occasion they introduce a little genre blending, but are all still FPS games.
Homeworld is an RTS with one of the best resonating scripts and ludonarratives I've seen in any game.
On a personal note, I feel people need to be more accepting of letting things go. Preserve them, yes, but infinitely grind out more? No. Casablanca didn't need a TV series. Firefly didn't need a movie. Homeworld doesn't need a 3.
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LOL might as well write this series off. After Gearbox does their usual work (take a shit in a box and put a sticker on it), the fans will be wishing the IP had just been lost for eternity.
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Jeez did Gearbox kill everyone's dog? Sure Duke Nukem was a pile of crap but it wasn't them that really made the game, and A:CM was utter shit but that again was not solely Gearbox's fault, too many cooks. This guy sounds like a HW fan and wants to bring it in its purest form to GOG, and is asking fans about what they'd like to see for HW3. Sounds like the right sort of thing to do for me.
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Well, they definitely have a long way to go to win gamers back. If they are smart, they will take any HW game they make VERY seriously and try to knock it out of the park. If they did that (and surprise everybody) then... maybe they will earn back some love.
I personally like Gearbox simply for Borderlands 1 and 2 which I really enjoyed playing with friends. I give them points for those games. I'm also one of the 5 people who found some joy in playing Duke Nukem Forever and while I think it's obvious that it's a heavily flawed game... I was thankful to Gearbox for finally getting it out the door (which is more than 10 or whatever other companies were able to do). -
'too many cooks' on A:CMwas their fault. They made the call to outsource so they are bad at their own development or make bad decisions about who else should do it. Either way they fucked up.
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A:CM sucking was entirely Gearbox's fault.
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Keep in mind, the first thing they are going to do is make the original games available on steam. That should garner some good will.
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Guess it could have ended in the hands of someone with a better track record, but honestly, BL2 is a good game and surprises can happen anyway. I don't get the whole doom and gloom about a game no-one has seen a picture of, or knows anything about. For all we know it will be handled by the same team / people that BL2 was, and if that's not good enough, I think your standards need a bit of a tweaking.
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Bring on the shacksperg.
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Don't worry. They'll outsource it to someone else. ... Wait..
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