THQ

THQ

The video game company that we all grew up with.

Founded:	1989
Defunct:	January 23, 2013
Founder:	Jack Friedman
Headquarters:	Agoura Hills, California, United States
Key people:	Brian Farrell (chairman, CEO) Jason Rubin (president)
Successor:	THQ Nordic
Subsidiaries:	Black Pearl Software Helixe Outrage Games Kaos Studios GameFX

THQ Inc. was an American video game publisher that was founded in 1989, the THQ stand for Toy Headquarters, they are well famous for publishing many licensed games, the company was shutdown in 2013 due to bankruptcy. They have now been acquired by Nordic Games, an Austrian publisher, under the THQ name, re-releasing a bunch of classic Nickelodeon games plus HD releases of other classic THQ games as well.

Why They Rocked

They published much awesome game series such as Destroy All Humans, Saint Row, Darksiders and De Blob.
They published some of the best license games such as SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom (along with many great Nickelodeon games), Disney Pixar games, movie-based games, etc. And they even brought back the You Don't Know Jack series along with Jackbox Games.
THQ published many great WWE games. While it was a yearly sports series, almost every game had major differences, unlike many yearly games like FIFA and Call Of Duty.
They'd actually go beyond with their licensed games and publishing unique games, like WWE All Stars, or the Cars series.
Most of their 7th generation games didn't have DLC, and the DLC they did provide was cheap and optional.
Their game WALL-E was the first game to ever be officially localized in Arabic.

Bad Qualities

Their uDraw GameTablet, while sounding good on paper, was a huge flop. It's widely considered one of the reasons THQ became bankrupt.
Unfortunately, THQ published very bad games during their years, if you want to see those bad games, go to Crappy Games Wiki and you will see some that are in the category "THQ games"
Throughout the 2000s, they have closed multiple studios such as Mass Media Inc. (which was later re-opened), Vigil Games, Black Pearl Software, amongst others.
While they were a good company, they gave other companies such as BigSky Interactive a hard time.
- For example, one of the designers at BigSky Interactive took a week off to fly to Japan to attend the funeral of their grandfather. The video can be found here.