During THQ's latest quarterly investor call -- that saw the embattled publisher post its first profit in a while -- THQ President Jason Rubin disclosed the latest casualty in the company's streamlining process, the secretive videogame project 'Insane', which was being developed at THQ's Volition Inc studio (Saints Row, Red Faction), in collaboration with acclaimed film director Guillermo del Toro.

We have also stopped development for certain areas that are not productive for our new strategy.

...Consistent with this vision, THQ has made a few changes to previously announced projects. First, we made the determination not to pursue any casual Facebook games. Second, we will not be publishing casual mobile games, including those with Innovative Leisure. And third, we have decided not to pursue further pre-production on Insane, and have returned all of our IP rights to Guillermo del Toro.

...By cancelling these explorations outside of our core business, we feel we can improve focus on our core game portfolio, which remains unchanged.

Insane follows Devil's Third out of the THQ family, which similarly had its IP rights returned to its creator Tomonobu Itagaki and the Japanese studio Valhalla.

Little was known about Insane beyond it's teasting reveal at the 2010 Spike Video Game Awards, that promised a planned trilogy of games that hoped to deliver "an unprecedented cinematic experience while redefining storytelling in gaming", with the first game expected to launch in 2013.

Given the wording of Rubin's announcement, which only mentions IP rights and nothing in the way of development assets or partially completed work, we'd have to guess that the future of the Insane, at least in whatever its current form might have been, likely ends here.