THQ Fire Sale Sees Sega Buy Relic Entertainment, Ubisoft Pick Up Montreal Studio

TORONTO -- The bankruptcy sell-off of video game maker THQ Inc. has reverberated in Canada, where a host of foreign players have set up shop in recent years.

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Sega stepped in to acquire Vancouver-based Relic Entertainment for $26.6 million.

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And French video game giant Ubisoft, which already has around 16 employees in Montreal, came away from the court-directed auction with the THQ Montreal studio and another 170 employees acquired for $2.5 million.

“This is the very first time in my life that I have come to a studio that was just newly acquired, given a speech to everyone, and then have everyone applaud,” Yannis Mallat, Ubisoft Montreal CEO and head of Ubisoft Canada, told the Financial Post newspaper in the wake of the deal.

Sega in a statement said the Relic Entertainment purchase was part of a bid to "further reinforce PC game development capabilities in the U.S. and European regions.”