Ko announced, that in order to remain in profitability, the company will be consolidating a few of their offices. This will consist of closing their McKinney, Texas and downtown Austin offices and relocating the employees to the company’s Dallas and North Austin offices. Zynga will also be consolidating their NYC offices by moving staff to their NYC mobile studio.

Unfortunately, Baltimore wasn’t so lucky, and the company has decided to close the Baltimore studio. However, the employees who requested a transfer were able to get one, and “the overall impact of the consolidations on [the] team is minimal.” Of course, some employees were let go, but it’s good news that entire studio’s worth of employees didn’t get the ax.

Ko says that these changes will enable Zynga to focus their “resources on [their] most strategic opportunities.” Ko says that there’s still a lot of work to do, but it seems that the company is confident enough to come out of this strong and deliver future products to casual gamers all over the internet.

Of course, the USPS has been on the brink of defaulting for a while now, experiencing huge losses left and right. The company believes that by cutting out regular Saturday mail delivery, they’ll save a lot of money that will hopefully start putting them in the black. Specifically, the USPS says it will save about $2 billion a year.

Again, they’re only halting normal mail delivery, and will continue to stick with package deliveries on Saturdays. The USPS didn’t lay out their plan on how that will work exactly, but overall, there will be far less Postal Service trucks out on the roads during Saturdays starting in August.

The USPS has been discussing the possibility of switching to five-day delivery for the past couple years now, but it will finally go into affect this year. Approximately 170 billion pieces of snail mail flew through USPS facilities in 2011, which sounds like an insanely large and healthy number, but that’s actually down 22% from five years earlier.

Those employees are receiving their final paychecks today, and though a lot of benefits are also ending today, health insurance will continue until January 31. Unsurprisingly, THQ’s stock isn’t worth anything with its core business shutting down. Whether or not employees will receive severance or back vacation pay is currently up in the air, we imagine much to the annoyance of those workers. THQ says that it will be talking with creditors to provide an answer about severance and vacation pay, but at the moment, things don’t sound very good on that front.

What happens from here on out is something of a mystery. While a number of THQ’s former studios are now under new ownership, there are some franchises and studios that weren’t bid on in this week’s auction. THQ president Jason Rubin said yesterday that the left over IP would be sold off in a separate process, but for now, we don’t know what that process is or when it will be happening.

Hopefully it happens soon though, as fan-favorite series Darksiders is one of the casualties of THQ’s bankruptcy. No one made a bid for developer Vigil Games, despite the fact that Darksiders is one of THQ’s biggest franchises. Many gamers out there would hate the see the Darksiders franchise go, so we’re keeping our fingers crossed and hoping that it will find a new home eventually.

There are plenty of Darksiders fans who were saddened to hear that Vigil hadn’t found a new owner, but hope isn’t entirely lost yet. In a new interview with Game Informer, THQ president Jason Rubin touched briefly on what will happen to the IP and studios that weren’t sold off in yesterday’s auction. According to him, THQ’s remaining properties will be sold off in a “separate process” sometime down the road.

“There will be a separate process to sell off the back catalog and IP,” Rubin said “That process will take place in the coming weeks.” Rubin didn’t get into detail about this separate process, so we’ll have to wait and see what the company has planned. Take heart, Darksiders fans, because the franchise may not be dead yet.

In fact, after the results of the auction were announced yesterday, we heard that Platinum Games might be interested in buying up Darksiders. Platinum would probably only buy the IP and not Vigil, so that may ruffle some feathers with fans of the studio. You never know though – maybe a different company will swoop in to buy Vigil and all of its properties before everything is said and done. Stay tuned.

160 stores out of 528 doesn’t seem too bad, especially for a company that has been struggling as much as Blockbuster in recent years. It could definitely be worse, but this announcement doesn’t necessarily mean that the other 368 stores are out of the woods. Deloitte says that more closures may come by the time everything is said and done, so many employees are still bracing for the worst this morning.

The ultimate goal here is to turn Blockbuster UK into an attractive deal for potential buyers, and that’s obviously done by shutting down stores that aren’t making a profit as a means of saving money. Deloitte certainly has its work cut out for it, as Blockbuster – once the king of movie and game rentals – has been losing a lot of ground to digital retailers and streaming services like Netflix.

There doesn’t seem to be any word on which stores across the UK will be shutting down, but Deloitte will probably be ready to share that information soon. When Blockbuster announced that it was going into administration last week, it said that it would continue trading as usual, meaning that for the time being, nothing about Blockbuster’s business will be changing from a consumer perspective. Keep it here at SlashGear and we’ll keep you updated on Blockbuster UK’s bout with bankruptcy.

[via GamesIndustry International]

The company has entered into a purchase agreement with a bidder to acquire all assets of THQ’s operating business, including four studios owned by THQ, as well as games in development. The four studios include THQ Wireless, THQ Digital Studios Phoenix, Volition Inc., and Vigil Games.

The filing says that THQ has entered into an agreement with a “stalking horse bidder,” or a bidder chosen by THQ to avoid lower bids on their assets, which in this case will be Clearlake Capital Group. THQ says they have acquired approximately $37.5 million in financing commitments from Wells Fargo and Clearlake.

THQ has a number of announced games in development, including South Park: The Stick of Truth at Obsidian Entertainment, Company of Heroes 2 at Relic Entertainment, Metro: Last Light at 4A Games, Homefront 2 at Crytek, and a new Saints Row game at Vigil. Unannounced THQ titles are also in the works at THQ Montreal and Turtle Rock Studios. In court documents, THQ listed assets of $204.8 million and debts of $248.1 million, but the company says that they don’t plan on reducing its number of employees as a result of the bankruptcy.

A123 and Johnson had announced that they had entered an asset purchase agreement that was valued at $125 million. The deal would see Johnson Controls getting cathode powder manufacturing facilities in China and equity interests that A123 held in Shanghai Advanced Traction Battery Systems. Johnson Controls announced over the weekend that it has now withdrawn from the bankruptcy auction and will not be acquiring portions of A123.

The reason Johnson Controls has withdrawn from the auction because it has declined to match a higher bid offered by a company called Wanxiang. A123 Systems has announced that they have selected Wanxiang’s bid of $257 million as the best offer for the total company. The bid offered by Johnson Controls was for the automotive and government assets along with NEC for the grid and commercial assets.

The deal isn’t complete yet with the final sale pending approval from bankruptcy courts. A hearing on the deal is scheduled for December 11, 2012. Approval for the deal is also subject to review by the Committee for Foreign Investment in the United States and will require approval by the US government. There is no indication of when that approval might be given.