Saints Row – under new management

The old THQ may be dead and buried but the company that bought their name now owns even more of their old game franchises.

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You may not even have heard of THQ Nordic before, but the Swedish company behind the publisher has been around since at least 2008.

They’ve been expanding ever since, by acquiring other companies and their brands, including the name THQ and many of their old franchises like Darksiders, Red Faction, and Sphinx And The Cursed Mummy.

But now they’ve announced they’re going to buy Germany company Koch Media, better known in the UK as Saints Row publisher Deep Silver.




The weird thing is that on paper Koch Media are by far the bigger company, but even so this means THQ Nordic have control of even more old THQ franchises – including developer Saints Row and Red Faction creator Volition.

They also get the Dead Island franchise, the mishandling of which (given there’s still no sign of a sequel) is probably one of the things that helped Koch Media became cheap enough to snap up.

THQ Nordic also now have the publishing rights to the Metro series, including the forthcoming Metro: Exodus, and presumably Deep Silver’s contract to publish Atlus and some Sega games in Europe – including Shenmue III.

In addition to publishing games, Koch Media helps distribute titles for a number of Japanese publishers on the Continent, so this is quite a big deal. Even so, it only cost THQ Nordic a little over £100 million.

There’s indication of what THQ Nordic will do with their new acquisitions, but the chances of a new Saints Row (not just spin-off Agents Of MAYHEM) and/or Red Faction just went up massively.

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