When THQ perished earlier this year, the developer of the Four Horsemen themed Darksiders franchise,Vigil Games, perished alongside it. There were more stories to tell though (there are two more Horsemen, after all), and much like Vigil’s core creative team was given a second chance recently, Darksiders may as well.
Crytek USA CEO and former Vigil Games head David Adams said that his studio is going to attempt to buy back the Darksiders series when it goes up for auction this month. “Going to bid on Darksiders IP,” said Adams on Twitter, “Put seven years of heart and soul into that franchise, and I think it belongs at home with its creators.”
Vigil co-founder Ryan Stefanelli backed up Adam’s statement later on saying that Crytek will be the owner of the franchise, not just the former staff behind the games. “When the Darksiders IP goes up for auction, Crytek will be bidding for it,” Steffanelli told Destructoid, “Not much more since the rest is left up to courts and legal shenanigans, but we’re still excited at the prospect.”
This is a marked turn around for Crytek USA, the newly formed subsidiary studio of Crysis 3-maker Crytek. When the company hired Adams and a select number of Vigil staff in January, the company showed a great deal of excitement for the people, but not for the Darksiders series. Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli said at the time that his company had no interest in continuing the Darksiders series. While that was a shame, it wasn’t all that surprising either. Darksiders 2 only sold around 1.5 million copies, well below expectations for the game.
Other studios have expressed interest in the Darksiders property. Platinum Games’ Atsushi Inaba, one of the men behind Bayonetta and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, said in January that he’d be interested in buying the series provided it was affordable.
