Report: 38 Studios Lays Off Entire Staff [UPDATED]

KoA: Reckoning needed to sell 3 million?

Geeez talk about unrealistic goals.

Expecting your RPG to sell 3 million copies while basically going head to head with Skyrim was sheer folly. Maybe these guys shouldn't have been in this business in the first place.

Am i an asshole to suggest expecting 3 million sales from a new franchise from an unknown studio who released an iffy demo is abit hopefull?
 
Don't get me wrong i like the game and i think they achieved what they set out to do (without co-op), but that seems pretty high.

Man... talk about a blunt ass e-mail.

Hardly surprising they went under if they were foolish enough to think KOA:R would sell over 3 million copies that fast. 1.2 million is very good for a new IP and should have been what they anticipated in the first place.

Terrible for all those hard-working employees. I don't know about New England (other than Levine's studio) but at least some of the Big Huge Games guys can try to go back to Firaxis (some came from there) or make the long commute to Bethesda.

Does this mean a Rich Gallup appearance on the Bombcast?

@chan05 said:

Holy shit..how can they develope an MMO and realize at one point that they have to fire everyone because they are out of money? Don't they...plan stuff??

The plan was apparently that Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning would be a mega-hit and give them lots of cash and make them attractive to investors. Though Curt's tweet about EA's low sales projections would indicate that they had been clearly told this was wildly unrealistic.

I feel sorry for the employees. The owner can eat a fat meaty one. To send an email like that, this company deserves to end. I hope all the employees who work so hard get new jobs.

Man, that email really hits home with me. Who says that? Really? You're a total f**n asshole.

ArenaNet is hiring for Guild Wars 2 guys.

https://twitter.com/ArenaNet/status/205775006012153856

@ObsideonDarman said:

Man... talk about a blunt ass e-mail.

Hey guys, sorry to ruin your day or any plans that you might have of living in a house or something, but uh, you're all fired.

~~~ta

There's a real strong, offensive, word that would describe Shilling perfectly right now but I will keep it civil.

Ouch. 
 
It's easy to analyze after the fact, but it does seem like these guys just tried to go too big way too soon.

How the fuck do you take a bet on a game that needs to sell three million to BREAK EVEN with taxpayer money? 38 was utterly idiotic for buying Big Huge, and Rhode Island was downright deadbrained for giving the thumbs up on this loan.

Get it straight: they didn't EXPECT Reckoning to sell over 3 million, 3 million is how much it NEEDED to sell for the studio to stay afloat. Do you see the distinction? They are poor planners, not insane optimists.

How could any employee not see the writing on the wall? If they were really caught off guard and had hopes of buying a home, then they don't understand business, the volatile MMO market, or anything going on around them. The type of people that got "screwed" by this are probably the type of people that sunk the company. The competent people are just going to move on and have prepared themselves for this eventuality.

truly sad, know a lot of Big Huge Games employees... hope they land on their feet!

Economic downturns are the worst.

Damn man... The way this whole deal has gone down so fast seems like the management was never upfront with the employees. They must have seen this coming months ago since the KOA:R launch.

300+ people out of jobs in a flash. While the chances of them selling the IP and perhaps restarting development elsewhere looks real unlikely, I thought the recent Project Copernicus screenshots looked interesting.

Well at least good to see studios from all over reaching out to the laid off developers and offering openings to help them get back on their feet!!

Good luck for the future to any people from 38 Studios in what must be one hell of crazy time.

after 5 years of working for a company i got laid off a couple of weeks ago. sucks ass.

This studio sounds like it was managed by the worst, most misinformed people it could have been. It really seems like management had no idea what they were doing.

@Ghostiet said:

@Korwin said:

@Ujio said:

@hawkinson76 said:

@Jace said:

@SimplyTron said:

@Jace said:

@SimplyTron said:

@zombie2011 said:

@SimplyTron said:

@UnrealDP said:

@Jace said:

I Think Boxes are cool as a great fit.

My box is better than your box dick.

Fuck you this is totally a superior box

Your mum's a box

This box totally outclasses all previous boxes I win

This is the most mature box you'll see today

Wait all this from one little box?

Your box is a douche, this box is fine

This needs more box

Boy we really love boxes

I agree, boxes are pretty rad

Taking this box to the next level.

Enough. No more quote trees.

Man this sucks, thoughts go out to all the employees there

It really sucks when a game has to sell 3+ million in order for it to be a success or even break even :/ No wonder there are so few large RPGs these days. Very sad news. All the best to the people out looking for jobs.

@Gizmo said:

The TRUTH is out there!

I'm sorry but it what fucking world does someone decide to make a fantasy RPG which needs to sell 3 million units just to break even? I've got no sympathy for Schilling but I hope the clearly talented people at the studio move on to something better.

Too bad.

I hope Big Huge reforms and kickstarts Rise of Nations 2.

So sad that Big Huge is no more. I always dreamed of RoN2

@SmokePants: Quit acting like such an ass. 38 Studios is a privately held company so they didnt' have to tell their employees anything until things completely collapsed. How do you know that the hard-working employees were told KOA:R HAD to sell 3 million copies to break even? For all we know the employees were told that the sales were excellent and everything was going great financially.

They entered the job on good faith - the owners, and maybe upper management, of 38 broke that trust and failed to act in good faith. The fault lies with them - not "naive" employees.

So, does this mean the entire studio was fucked over and wasn't paid their last paycheck for sure? Cause that's complete bullshit. How could a company not know they don't have any money left. They should've done right by their employees and at least given them some lead up time to search for another job. I hope no one loses a house or anything super crappy.

What a giant fucking disgusting mess.

Wow... Amalur was good too... I guess that's what happens when you release in the wake of something like Skyrim. Lessons learned all around I hope.

@Jace said:

CBS, please go grab Rich. GB needs a decent east coast correspondent. Most of the GB community already loves the guy, he would be a great fit.

Isn't Alex the east coast correspondent?

I feel bad for the employees, but I feel worst for the RI and its citizens. I do not understand how RI would get involved in this. This company should of been back by the private sector and not the public sector. I understand giving tax breaks to start up companies, but not financially backing a risky business. Lets face it and videogame company is a risky business. You live and die by the sale of one game. Also, 1.2 million copies sold in my opinion is a good, right? I mean how can you predict 3million to be your safe point of sale when this is your first game.

A real shame. Both for the company and everybody who lost their jobs, but also that 1.2 million in sales was not enough to make the game profitable and keep the company afloat.

@Grognard66: I was not excusing management. I was not blaming employees. I was just explaining why my heart does not bleed for them. They got paid (mostly).

Mostly, I don't feel bad for the primary 38 staff. The BHG team may have been insulated from the goings-ons. But remember that they were working on that game in some form even before they were acquired 3 years ago. Time is money, especially in this industry, and anybody with a calendar can figure out whether the game they're working on is going to be profitable or not. They don't need to be told via memorandum.

Dang. Good luck to everyone now looking for work.

@Gizmo: So, Chafee and his re-election campaign in the next few years?

Everyone is too busy playing stale ass COD and BF3 to care about KOA... I HATE COD... The fish and the game... they stink! Repetitive garbage ass game," let's run around in circles on the same map 50,000 times... die... respawn... throw grenades... Fire... Reload... Repeat ... Repeat... Repeat". If you think COD is a good game, you have absolutely no taste or you're 13 yrs old. Good games like KOA are being ignored or overlooked because of tasteless garbage like COD. It sucks when a Company like 38 goes down simply because of sales and not because their product was flawed. Doesn't look like KOA is going to have a sequel...

@PolygonSlayer said:

It really sucks when a game has to sell 3+ million in order for it to be a success or even break even :/ No wonder there are so few large RPGs these days. Very sad news. All the best to the people out looking for jobs.

I feel sorry for the employees, but not the company. The company took a huge risk on a new IP that no one has heard of. I don't really know of any franchise's first title from a brand new company can sell 3 million in the first go. The company has an ego bigger than Kanye West if they thought they could automatically print money like they are a well-known company like Bioware or Bethesda... It infuriates me. Those employees deserved better.

Seriously though, I've been looking at vgchartz for an hour now and I still haven't found anything. Not trying to say it isn't statistically possible, but that they didn't have a model to follow by so of course they didn't succeed.

@urban_ryoga said:

@PolygonSlayer said:

It really sucks when a game has to sell 3+ million in order for it to be a success or even break even :/ No wonder there are so few large RPGs these days. Very sad news. All the best to the people out looking for jobs.

I feel sorry for the employees, but not the company. The company took a huge risk on a new IP that no one has heard of. I don't really know of any franchise's first title from a brand new company can sell 3 million in the first go. The company has an ego bigger than Kanye West if they thought they could automatically print money like they are a well-known company like Bioware or Bethesda... It infuriates me. Those employees deserved better.

Seriously though, I've been looking at vgchartz for an hour now and I still haven't found anything. Not trying to say it isn't statistically possible, but that they didn't have a model to follow by so of course they didn't succeed.

You're mistake is trying to find factual information using VGChartz.

The fact that some of you actually come to the comments of all of Alex's stories and just start needlessly bitching about his stories is absolutely pathetic. Go fuck yourself with something huge and spiky.

As for the actual news story, as everyone else has stated, this sucks for all of the employees. I don't see how 3 million copies for a new IP over... what, 6 months? is a realistic goal. Whoever set those goals is absolutely crazy.

The game would have been great with a bit better writing and a better release date in my opinion.

Everyone is too busy playing stale ass COD and BF3 to care about KOA... I HATE COD... The fish and the game... they stink! Repetitive garbage ass game," let's run around in circles on the same map 50,000 times... die... respawn... throw grenades... Fire... Reload... Repeat ... Repeat... Repeat". If you think COD is a good game, you have absolutely no taste or you're 13 yrs old. Good games like KOA are being ignored or overlooked because of tasteless garbage like COD. It sucks when a Company like 38 goes down simply because of sales and not because their product was flawed. Doesn't look like KOA is going to have a sequel...

I did not feel the quality of that game warranted a budget so large that they would have needed to sell 3 million copies to turn a profit... There was absolutely nothing spectacular about that game, they really should have budgeted better and scaled down when necessary because usually 1.2 million sales should be considered okay for a brand new IP, especially one with such a polarizing look and art style.

1.2 million sales and it's considered a failure. What a world we live in.

The state should hire people to finish that game and then the publisher can be R.I. That would be legit. They could do a F2P model with all the proceeds going to the state of R.I.

@Shaka999 said:

The fact that some of you actually come to the comments of all of Alex's stories and just start needlessly bitching about his stories is absolutely pathetic. Go fuck yourself with something huge and spiky.

As for the actual news story, as everyone else has stated, this sucks for all of the employees. I don't see how 3 million copies for a new IP over... what, 6 months? is a realistic goal. Whoever set those goals is absolutely crazy.

Especially up against Skyrim, which I don't think anyone expected to be AS big as it has been, but it's still an established franchise following up a REALLY well-remembered near-launch title.

@Bummey said:

1.2 million sales and it's considered a failure. What a world we live in.

Yeah, they should plan for that ahead of time. New franchise from new developer. That combination will NEVER ever sell 3 million units. Well, maybe in a few cases, but these people need to cling to reality a bit more.

@Pseudonymous: HEY EVERYONE! SOMEONE ON THE INTERNET IS MAKING FUN OF CALL OF DUTY! HOP ON BOARD THE CIRCLEJERK EXPRESS! THE TRAIN IS LEAVING THE STATION!

I'd be interested to know what happens if 38 declares bankruptcy.

As I understand it they've already defaulted on the loan, if they go bankrupt does that mean RI taxpayers get left with the remaining debt?

Also, who ends up with the right to the franchise? Does the state get to sieze it an auction it off?

This sucks. I wanted to see what RA came up with for a world.

Well wishes to everyone who just got let go. I hope you all land on your feet.