Anyone who has been following the Activision/Blizzard merger and the fate of Double Fine’s Brütal Legend probably experienced a bit of anxiety on Monday when Activision announced that they would not be publishing the game. Of course, Tim Schafer was sure to let us know that the game would be fine in his own special way, but that didn’t give us much in the way of cold, hard facts. Who will be publishing the game? When will it actually come out?

Do we have answers to these questions? Well, not yet. What we do know, courtesy of Variety, is that Double Fine owns the rights to Brütal Legend, so it’s not dead as long as they don’t want it to be. Apparently, the company is shopping around for publishers, although I would have enjoyed the irony of Sierra publishing a Tim Schafer game. (Tim used to make adventure games for LucasArts, the biggest competition for Sierra when adventure games ruled the day).

Variety claims that whatever ends up happening may be a “unique” arrangement, and they are close to making a new deal concerning the publication of Brütal Legend. I was already starting to doubt that this game would make its December released date (it was already pushed back once, and often a delay to December really means “see you next year”), so sadly, it doesn’t seem likely that we will be playing this one in 2008. Just look on the bright side: the game is not canceled, and Tim Schafer is still working on it, which almost guarantees awesome.

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