Double Fine joins the THQ bidding to win back its own games

By Anthony John Agnello February 28, 2013

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Double Fine, the studio behind such fine products as Psychonauts, Costume Quest, and Stacking, are still in the pool of video game developers and publishers bidding on the leftover properties held by THQ. The now defunct publisher is set to auction off the last remnants of its business in April, and while big ticket items like Darksiders and Red Faction will be auctioned off individually, what Double Fine is after is unfortunately included in a package of 34 other intellectual properties.

In particular, Double Fine is trying to win back the console distribution rights to Costume Quest and Stacking. It self-published those titles in 2010 and 2011, but THQ managed their release on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

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“Double Fine owns the IP rights to Costume Quest and Stacking,” Double Fine VP of business development Justin Bailey told Polygon, “THQ retained limited distribution rights that we bid on during the previous process to reclaim them prior to their expiration. We are optimistic about regaining these distribution rights, as this process has already demonstrated that when there are parties interested in specific assets, those assets are worth more when sold separately.”

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Schafer notes that Double Fine invested a large sum of its own capital into Broken Age, supplementing the $3.3 million it earned from an initial round of funding as "Double Fine Adventure" via Kickstarter in 2012.

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Iron Brigade, originally released in 2011 as Trenched, falls firmly into the action genre, with a bit of tower defense on the side. Though Double Fine developed the game, it was published by Microsoft, and this caused some problems for players of the PC version, as it was tied to the broken Games For Windows Live service.

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Last month, the second act of Double Fine’s Broken Age was finally released, bringing an end to a saga that began with the launch of that game’s Kickstarter campaign in 2012. With the final game shipped, the company has been able to focus completely on other projects it has had in the works, chiefly the turn-based strategy title Massive Chalice.
The game has been in development for two years at this point, and came to Steam Early Access in October 2014. Now a date has been set for when the game will leave Early Access for a proper release: June 1.
Massive Chalice will also be headed to Microsoft’s Xbox One “around then” as well, according to a forum post by Double Fine community manager Spaff.

Unlike a lot of Early Access games, Massive Chalice launched in a very playable state. Of course there were performance issues and the game crashed from time to time, but it was clear from the basic gameplay that Double Fine has created something special here.
While the game is most easily described as a turn-based strategy game, Massive Chalice has an ambitious scope, telling a story that spans 300 years. Battles provide the meat of the gameplay, but in the space between battles your surviving soldiers marry, have families, and pass on their genetic traits, resulting in a new generation of soldiers with specific advantages and disadvantages. When soldiers fall in combat, not only are they gone, but so are their traits.
The final 1.0 version of the game won’t “just be about making the game shinier,” Spaff writes in the post. New features are inbound as well, including controller support for the Steam version of the game, achievements, and balance adjustments.
To celebrate the launch, Double Fine will be hosting a live “teamstream” on June 1 on the company’s Twitch channel. As with Broken Age, a series filmed by 2 Player Productions documenting the game’s development, titled Massive Knowledge, will be released alongside the game.
The Early Access version of Massive Chalice is currently available on Steam for $30.