THQ Laying Off Over 170 Workers

COMMENTARY | THQ, the video game company behind such hits as Darksiders and the Saint's Row trilogy, will unfortunately be laying over over 170 employees today, including the vice president of technology.

This news comes just under a month after THQ was reported to have been put up for sale. It was also reported that it canceled its entire 2014 lineup, but that was later written off as false by THQ. That may have gave gamers a glimmer of hope for the company, but that hope sadly did not stick around for very long and was ultimately crushed today as Eurogamer reported the unfortunate news.

Independent industry executive Kevin Dent confirmed the news today on his Twitter account. His tweet reads as follows: "This is probably going to break in the morning, I have sat on it for a week or so. The culling at THQ was 170+ souls including Mark DeLoura."

Just yesterday THQ was threatened with a Nasdaq stock exchange delisting if its share prices did not rise above $1.00 in 10 days. THQ, of course, is trying to stay as tight-lipped as possible about the whole ordeal in an attempt to save potential investors from turning heads. As you can tell, attempting to keep the company's woes from coming to light did not exactly help matters.

Mark Deloura, the vice president of technology who was also laid off, seems to be taking the news in an extremely chipper tone, if his Twitter account is anything to go by. Last night he tweeted at Kevin Dent, "I'm skipping DICE this year... a beach and a margarita are calling my name :)" It is nice to see some of the people effected by these unfortunate events are handing things well.

While it is completely speculation at the moment as to why the company has fallen on such hard times, I believe it has to do with getting their core audience confused with their secondary. Out of 14 games released last year, the majority of the gaming community have not heard of more than five. The other games were horribly marketed and aimed toward children, who apparently were as disinterested in the games as the core gaming audience they should have invested all their time into. Of course, as a core gamer I am somewhat biased on the matter. I see companies do this all the time -- attempting to throw out as many games as they can at the children's market in an attempt to rake in some cash while bigger projects are being worked on. It rarely succeeds as much as they hope, and if that's the case with THQ, it may have ultimately cost them big time.