Gearbox may relinquish Heat IP

Gearbox Software has revealed that it may sell to other studios the right to develop a game based on the 1995 Michael Mann film Heat.

The ten year-old Texan developer, currently at the closing stages of the Borderlands project, said it didn’t have the time resources to work on a Heat game.

“In a nutshell, we’re nowhere,” said Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford, speaking to GameSpot.

“We have passionate game makers that would love to do it. We’ve got filmmakers that think it’s a great idea that would love to see it done. We have publishing partners that would love to publish it. But we have no time. That’s the limiting factor,” he added.

Pitchford said that the studio was no longer “keeping the IP locked down”.

“If somebody else were in a spot where they could do it,” he said, “and everybody was comfortable with that, then conceivably that could happen.”

The Borderlands co-founder went on to criticise certain other studios’ tendency to hold onto dormant IP without the intention to ever work on it.

“They’ll just lock it down so somebody else can’t, and I think that’s kind of crappy,” he concluded.