THQ's dissolution was a sad thing. I had hoped the company of Red Faction and Metro 2033 would avoid financial ruin, but alas, it was not meant to be . Publishers like Deep Silver picked up the Saints Row and Metro franchises, but where did everything else go? Well, it went to little-known company called Nordic Games.

The small, Austria-based studio bought the Darksiders, Red Faction, and MX vs ATV franchises for a cool $4.9 million back in April, and has remained quiet ever since. The head of business and product development at Nordic, Reinhard Pollice, told Joystiq he hopes to change that by Gamescom, which begins on August 22.

“We want to carefully select which franchises are up for getting a sequel or new installment. We closely monitor the communities on that," Pollice said.

So exactly how small is Nordic? The studio consists of 15 people who have traditionally helped publish games from other developers. For example, they helped publish Painkiller: Hell & Damnation and the boxed copy of Alan Wake.

Pollice prided himself on being part of a passionate team, but admitted that the studio needs more bodies.

"Darksiders is really big,” Pollice told Joystiq. “We know we need a partner for that—an established development team that can pull out such a big action adventure. We obviously talked to former team members and, if they are free, we want to somehow involve them. If they are allowed to because, you know, some of them found other jobs or are with Crytek now ."

It'd be nice to see developers work across company lines, but we're guessing the developers at Crytek are a little busy with other projects— like Homefront 2 .