38 Studios Possibly in Financial Trouble

I didn't like KoA but Rich is a good guy and I assume there are a bunch of equally good and talented people at 38 studios so I hope they make it through this.

@patrickklepek Do we have sales stats on KOAR yet?

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning sold at least a million copies, but MMO's...them things will eat you alive. Here we are so many years afterwards and what have we seen of this project? How can it compete against all the other fantasy MMO's already around plus Guild Wars 2 and The Elder Scrolls Online? Hell, THQ scraped the MMO part of their announced Warhammer 40k game. They've got other troubles but it doesn't change the fact that MMO's are expensive and risky.

I will pick up Kingdoms of Amalur when it gets cheaper. Frickin' game came out MONTHS ago and it's still $52 bucks. It should be $30 or AT LEAST $40 by now. Especially since the game has DLC. Games are supposed to depreciate in value unless they continue to sell; who do you think you are, Kingdoms of Amalur? Mario Kart?

EA is asleep at the wheel. They could keep moving units if they knocked the damn MSRP down every few weeks like they're supposed to. EA is a frustrating company; they really only support mainstream shit like Mass Effect and Dead Space and Medal of Honor. Even though they release more interesting titles like Brutal Legend, Mirror's Edge, Shadows of the Damned and Kingdom of Amalur, they just don't get the same promotion and support. And then studios suffer. You're probably getting pretty worried now Funcom; between The Secret World and Old Republic, which game do you think is a priority for EA? Secret World is going to get tossed under the bus like Warhammer.

Good luck 38 Studios. Make more single player games; screw the MMO. Sorry Curt Schilling; I know you dig 'em.

Enjoyed the Reckoning demo, but not enough to drop $60 on it. Skyrim's world may be superior, but I liked the look and charm that Reckoning's did. Shame it didn't come out before Skyrim so that it wouldn't have been so overshadowed by it' similar wrappings.

why are people bummed about this if they didn't like the game? it's all fine and good if you really enjoyed the game, but you shouldn't stay in business if you can't make a good game. with the pedigree of talent that studio had that game should have been AMAZING and you know what? It wasn't amazing. Not even close.

Hmmm, thought the game sold well? Anyways, hope it will be ok for the company.

I didn't think reckoning was very good, so this news isn't all that surprising to me. Plus putting your future in the basket of a fantasy MMO doesn't seem very smart either.

I ordered Kingdoms of Amalur off of Amazon about a week ago and it came in the mail today. I'm gearing up to play the game now as I read this. I find it to be an amusing coincidence.

Ouch Amalur wasn't a bad game... I hope they still will be financially sound enough that it doesn't throw the MMO under the bus... just remembering what happened to that Warhammer 40K MMO which become single player because they couldn't fund it.

@criacow said:

Too bad. I really enjoyed Reckoning, and when you consider it's the first game they've relased, it's really quite good.

Ditch the MMO. Nobody cares. Make another, even better, game.

They've spent years and untold millions of dollars on said mmo.

To be honest, I don't think they'll be around to release another game.

Hey governments, stop playing favorites with unknown business ventures. You are very likely to get hurt.

I am still interested in Amalur, but there was nothing about it that made me have to jump at a release date purchase. I'll get it eventually because the combat looks fun.

Too bad. I really enjoyed Reckoning, and when you consider it's the first game they've relased, it's really quite good.

Ditch the MMO. Nobody cares. Make another, even better, game.

@captain_clayman said:

Well, there's always money in the banana stand.

NO TOUCHING! NO TOUCHING!

KoA was pretty shit but it would be sad if they had to shut down.

@ZombiePie said:

The article should mention how the state loan of $75-million (60% of the state's high tech loan budget at the time) to 38 Studios came with the promise that 38 Studios would bring 450 jobs to the state by the end of 2012. The promise was nonbinding but probably set expectations for the state. Now that it is 2012 my guess is that 38 Studios is far from that promise and the state is re-examing their loan, which the studio is reliant on to keep it active. Hence the rumors of financial trouble.

useful information here from Zombie "Scoops" Pie.

Huh, I figured Reckoning had sold pretty well considering it's still hovering around $50 for a new copy. Maybe it didn't sell good enough?

@jeffrud said:

@ZombiePie said:

The article should mention how the state loan of $75-million (60% of the state's high tech loan budget at the time) to 38 Studios came with the promise that 38 Studios would bring 450 jobs to the state by the end of 2012. The promise was nonbinding but probably set expectations for the state. Now that it is 2012 my guess is that 38 Studios is far from that promise and the state is re-examing their loan, which the studio is reliant on to keep it active. Hence the rumors of financial trouble.

I wish I could upvote this.

eww a Reddit user, kill it with fire.

@LooseChange said:

I think after Skyrim there was fantasy open world fatigue. Thats what my friend told me anyways, he'd buy this game but after playing the hell out of Skyrim he was burned out on that type of game.

Your friend speaks the truth.

@ZombiePie said:

The article should mention how the state loan of $75-million (60% of the state's high tech loan budget at the time) to 38 Studios came with the promise that 38 Studios would bring 450 jobs to the state by the end of 2012. The promise was nonbinding but probably set expectations for the state. Now that it is 2012 my guess is that 38 Studios is far from that promise and the state is re-examing their loan, which the studio is reliant on to keep it active. Hence the rumors of financial trouble.

Very observant. Thanks for posting that info. Makes me wish there was some kind of rated comment system in place so that comments like this wouldn't get buried.

Does this mean that Reckoning flopped?

Rich Gallup to Giant Bomb?

So much Rhode Island in such a small article, feels good to be a rhody right now!

man, Rich Gallup whores budget must be pretty big

@Nardak said:

Darn...i tought the game would sell.

Did you buy it? I didn't.

That's kind of a bummer.

they need to cancel that mmo the market is way to crowded

and make a sequel to amalur it was a good game just needs some polish

Hard for me to feel too much sympathy for a studio that has yet to produce a game, as KoA was pretty much Big Head Studios' baby start to finish. If you want to keep a game development company solvent, at some point you actually have to sell something, let alone announce it. Hope there's some news in the pipeline for what we can expect from that MMO.

@captain_clayman said:

dang, that's a bummer. amalur is actually a pretty good game. well, there's always money in the banana stand.

You sir are correct.

@PXAbstraction said:

I was under the impression that EA was pleased with how Amalur was selling. Given that 38 Studios owns the IP, I figured they would have had a bigger cut of the royalties. The AAA business model is pretty much broken at this point if everyone can be pleased with a title's sales and the developer who had probably a sweeter publishing deal that most is still barely clinging to life after receiving a huge state loan as well.

The problem is that the studio was initially focused on the MMO, and is still plugging away at it, spending millions of dollars to deliver it to a market that has no interest in paying for the client software nor a monthly fee. Reckoning was pooped out as a stopgap, a way to use some of the assets they were producing in order to earn some money in the meantime.

Blizzard put a lot of effort into WoW, Sony put a lot into Everquest, Bioware put a lot into SWTOR, but at the end of the day they made their money elsewhere and they've got fairly rich coffers that allow them that luxury. Even if they are working everyone to the bone over there at 38 Studios, this is pretty much the John Romero model of game development. 38 is treating design as law and putting everything into an all-or-nothing product from a fairly unknown studio that has no time table, no recognition, no release date, no anticipation, and almost literally banking on the belief that the world you're building is going to garner enough fans to make it perpetually profitable. That's a super dangerous place to be as a game developer.

shit.....

Christ. Another day, another news story about a game studio in financial trouble. I hope 38 Studios and Rich Gallup pull through.

@ZombiePie said:

The article should mention how the state loan of $75-million (60% of the state's high tech loan budget at the time) to 38 Studios came with the promise that 38 Studios would bring 450 jobs to the state by the end of 2012. The promise was nonbinding but probably set expectations for the state. Now that it is 2012 my guess is that 38 Studios is far from that promise and the state is re-examing their loan, which the studio is reliant on to keep it active. Hence the rumors of financial trouble.

That's what I was thinking too, this article mentions milestones that 38 must hit in order to keep good on the agreement. It also mentions that 38 didn't receive all the money up front and that'd it'd be coming in parts over the next 18 months which it sounds like we'd be close to the end of now. So sounds like deal modification going on by one or both sides.

I thought Amalur would sell better then it did. I hope 38 Studios doesn't close its doors.

Wait... $75 million to produce one game? I know there's games like SWTOR that cost multiple times that, but I doubt even Skyrim cost that much to produce (marketing is a different bucket which developers don't handle).

Reckoning killed any interest I had in the MMO, it was a painfully generic game, with incredibly boring lore.

I'm not sure if Reckoning doing well alone could save the compnay, seeing as how they basically bought Amalur and have been working on their own MMO with nothing to show for it for a long, long time.

@jeffrud said:

@ZombiePie said:

The article should mention how the state loan of $75-million (60% of the state's high tech loan budget at the time) to 38 Studios came with the promise that 38 Studios would bring 450 jobs to the state by the end of 2012. The promise was nonbinding but probably set expectations for the state. Now that it is 2012 my guess is that 38 Studios is far from that promise and the state is re-examing their loan, which the studio is reliant on to keep it active. Hence the rumors of financial trouble.

I wish I could upvote this.

Yep, lets upvote it moar.

@SlightConfuse said:

Well MMO are expensive besides 38 did not work on AMalur they only publsihed it

Are you trolling? God i hope you are.

Woooo! Local news becoming national! We gave them so much money. @ZombiePie: We did indeed do that.

Rich spent it all on getting a new series of time trotters off the ground

Did that game sell pretty well?

I mean, it was just a bunch of straight cut and pasting, but didn't it do well?

@ZombiePie said:

The article should mention how the state loan of $75-million (60% of the state's high tech loan budget at the time) to 38 Studios came with the promise that 38 Studios would bring 450 jobs to the state by the end of 2012. The promise was nonbinding but probably set expectations for the state. Now that it is 2012 my guess is that 38 Studios is far from that promise and the state is re-examing their loan, which the studio is reliant on to keep it active. Hence the rumors of financial trouble.

I wish I could upvote this.

I think if I had seen the Time Trotters video before Reckoning came out, I probably would've bought it. Gallup is OG.

@SlightConfuse said:

Well MMO are expensive besides 38 did not work on AMalur they only publsihed it

DURRRRRRFFFFFFFFSPSSBBBTTTTT

This sucks...but, at least The Great Rich "Houdini Copperfield" Gallup can make a living off his magic tricks. That one at PAX east gave me the vapors.

I think after Skyrim there was fantasy open world fatigue. Thats what my friend told me anyways, he'd buy this game but after playing the hell out of Skyrim he was burned out on that type of game.

The thing I never understood was that they were using Reckoning to introduce players to the upcoming MMO. There are several problems there. No matter how great the backstory is, it will be yet another fantasy MMO. Reckoning already has a very similar art style to WoW. Do we really need another fantasy MMO? I think they'd be better off just making more single/co-op games as sequels to Reckoning. RI would be helping to fund a game that will not succeed, and most of those 450 jobs would be lost.

dang, that's a bummer. amalur is actually a pretty good game. well, there's always money in the banana stand.

Well MMO are expensive. besides 38 did not work on Amalur they only publsihed it.