Report: 38 Studios Lays Off Entire Staff [UPDATED]

we want rich back here. where he belongs

This is very sad, even straight up depressing following this whole thing now after all this time. I hope everyone who lost their job can find one sooner than later, honestly being in the family of someone who works on a game, especially one that is not totally kick ass and sells well must really tough. They were clearly dedicated people working on such an ambitious project, even if I do not care for MMORPGs virtually whatsoever I can appreciate the work that goes into one and especially in the state the genre is now. Good luck

after seeing shilling talk on fox news i knew he was an idiot... i assumed amalur was going to be a huge failure but after seeing its sales i thought maybe my dumb a-hole detector was broken. Turns out its just as sharp as ever.

Just another conservative preaching against handouts while raking them in hand over fist, and placing the blame on the state thats bankrolling him for not giving him enough subsidies. I have a feeling the ineptitude of shilling himself probably had a huge hand in all this, hopefully as more information gets out... we will get to see just how horribly mismanaged the company was.

Oh man , that must really hurt to get a mail like that . Not even a personal note . Not a thank you for your work and time . Nothing ..... No mention of the fact that you even exist for the management .

And i loved the demo . but then i don't play much rpg and don't know what's the standard in the genre apart from Skyrim . witch i haven't played yet .

Damn shame.

Absolutely crazy stuff. Hopefully the whole truth comes out eventually.

@Nutts: regardless if you bought the dlc now or later, the money will end up in the tax payers pocket, and rightfully so. Im all for supporting developers, but this ship has sailed quite some time ago

I feel bad for the employees, but it's no surprise the game tanked. it's only redeeming feature was amazing combat, but with no challenging enemies, sub par loot, and absolutely god awful story it was doomed. It should have been an MMO.

Does anyone know how this will effect the DLC that is currently available? Will it stay available? If I buy it now, does the money still go to 38 Studios, or will it go to the state of RI? I assume if they declare bankruptcy then the State of RI will get the IP and any future sales of the game and DLC? But since everyone is now laid off I guess all sales are now going straight to pay off the government loan anyway. If that is the case, I don't know if I really want the DLC. I like supporting developers, but I don't really want to support the RI government.

So one day they said the game outperformed the estimations by selling 1.2 M, the next day they say the game failed because it had to sell 3 M. Reckoning was a good game, I enjoyed it a lot. Sad to see they putting the blame of a whole management disaster on a single game, that is not bad to begin with.

Satan

Well the world just had to make sure we are never getting a sequel to Rise of Nations.

Wow, tragic on many levels.

Well you should of made a better game.

@TentPole said:

@BlackLagoon said:

@TentPole: The Governor never said Reckoning failed

I am going to say you are full of shit:

"The game failed, the game failed," Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee told attendees of a press conference

Sorry, I guess I deserved that. Should probably have been in bed instead of posting. Still, I think the sentiment of my post is valid. The Governor was talking about how many copies 38 Studios needed Reckoning to sell. Schilling was just saying that they beat EA's sales estimate, which says nothing about how profitable the game was for 38.

Noooooo Rich Gallup! :(

The lack of co-op had me not buying it. Talented people losing their job sucks but i can't help but think that this would have sold so much more if it wasn't a pure singleplayer experience.

Man, that sucks.

@BlackLagoon said:

@TentPole: The Governor never said Reckoning failed

I am going to say you are full of shit:

"The game failed, the game failed," Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee told attendees of a press conference

@MagicWuff said:

As a Rhode Island resident; Fuck.

I am now stuck with paying off this loan through tax dollars.

At least your the first state to own a video game IP.

@TentPole: The Governor never said Reckoning failed, selling well over a million it clearly didn't. Rather, he said it didn't sell enough to keep 38 going, which given the studio's massive debt meant it would have had to a been a 3+ million selling mega hit. This is why there's not a lot of faith in their MMO either, since it too would have to be exceptionally successful for it to be profitable, and in the current MMO marke that looks unlikely.

What a goddamn mess, in more ways than one. Best wishes to the former staff of 38.

Man, this is so sad. It was a chance to prove game development as a viable investment in general industry, but it just wasn't going to happen. I'm sorry for all those people losing their jobs now...

@Jumanji: For the record 38 studios never blamed Reckoning. Curt said it did well and sold well. It was the Rhode Island Governor who claimed it failed. This doesn't have any real impact on what you are saying and doesn't change anything, but this is what it is.

There is no way KoA:R ever had a chance to sell 3 million copies! It's a great game... But the average gamer has never heard of it!

As a Rhode Island resident; Fuck.

I am now stuck with paying off this loan through tax dollars.

@vinsanityv22 said:

I don't understand. I thought they still had payments to make to the state, with their next due in November. How can they generate ANY money if everyone is laid off and the developer shuttered.

I blame Curt Schilling. I don't want to, because Reckoning is great and he had nothing but noble intentions. But for fuck's sake, you don't jump into the deep end of the pool if you don't know how to swim! What kind of psycho would open a startup developer of that size? Something like 380 employees. And put them to work on an MMO, a game that won't even exist for 4-5 years. It's just bananas.

Not having read the thread, I'm not sure if someone covered the point I'm about to make. If so, apologies.

As you may know, 38 Studios received a $75 million loan secured by the State of Rhode Island . In exchange, the State reserved the right to set development "milestones". Now, these weren't traditional milestones, in the sense of "proof of systems development incrementing towards a release candidate". Instead, Rhode Island's milestones were just employment mandates. 38 Studios had to have X employees employed within the State of Rhode Island on such and such a date, and X+Y employees on a proceeding date, and so on.

Basically, Schilling locked his company into possibly the worst financing arrangement imaginable. Their $4m/month burn rate was written into their contract with their biggest lender. Anyone

a) privy to the details of their deal

b)capable of basic arithmetic,

c) with some rudimentary knowledge of MMO development,

would have seen the bankruptcy coming when the deal was signed.

38 Studios management blaming Reckoning for tanking are just throwing up a smokescreen. The unique conditions on the financing agreement with Rhode Island were what caused 38 Studios to tank, FULL STOP.

Of course, Schilling doesn't deserve ALL the blame. Rhode Island received dismal service from whoever it was that concocted the poison chalice presented to 38 Studios... the Amalur IP is obviously worthless and RI will have to pick up the entirety of the debt servicing charges into 2020, which will exceed $100 million.

/// edited out the mortgage stuff because it appears that the relocation flubs may not be malfeasance/incompetence at 38 Studios after all

I liked Amalur a lot. I hope some other decent studio picks up the IP when RI auctions it off and continues the series.

This is disgusting.

time to get riiich

public carries the losses, private entities take the profits. Yeah sounds like basic "self-made-man" republican strategy to me

I should probably go back and play more Amalur. Put about 20 hours in and kind of fell off of it.

Great world, great combat, storyline and quests were very much the worst part of it so far.

It's terrible what's happening to the employee and I hope that they all swiftly find jobs elsewhere.

And hopefully this makes developers/publishers think twice about pouring money into games so much that they have to sell several million to break even.

@Atary77 said:

Here's my big question, how do you sell 1 million copies and still be considered a failure?!

In the same way that Obsidian got no bonus and a ton of layoffs because Fallout New Vegas didn't get 85 on Metacritic (it got 84).

@Atary77: you spend more than $60million to make it. that's how.

Kingdoms of Amalur is a great game. 100 hours in and i've still only completed half the map and one DLC.

It's a real shame about 38 Studios but it seems to me that they were a little bit too ambitious with what they wanted to do and didn't have the funds to make it a reality.

This saddens me. Curt Schilling seemed like a guy who actually cared about what fans had to say. Hope he can pull this all together.

@ManMadeGod said:

@Marshall109 said:

So, I guess this means no Rise of Nations 2. Dammit.

God dam, RoN is still one of the best RTS games ever made. Now I need to re-install it, thanks.

Don't worry guys, Rise of Legends,

...

oh wait. That was bad.

Here's my big question, how do you sell 1 million copies and still be considered a failure?!

38 Studios founder Curt Schilling announced on Twitter yesterday that Reckoning sold 1.2 million copies. Chafee said the game needed to sell closer to three million.

"38 Studios laid off all 379 employees"

As of March 2012, Valve has 293 employees.

Just think about that for a second.

UPDATE 3: According to Chafee, 38 Studios took a turn for the worse due to poor sales of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.

“The game failed," said Chafee.

38 Studios founder Curt Schilling announced on Twitter yesterday that Reckoning sold 1.2 million copies. Chafee said the game needed to sell closer to three million.

@envane: yes exactly, i guess you must not work for a living and can't understand someone undervalueing what you do

good luck to all those looking for jobs

fiddlesticks.  :(

I don't understand. I thought they still had payments to make to the state, with their next due in November. How can they generate ANY money if everyone is laid off and the developer shuttered.

I blame Curt Schilling. I don't want to, because Reckoning is great and he had nothing but noble intentions. But for fuck's sake, you don't jump into the deep end of the pool if you don't know how to swim! What kind of psycho would open a startup developer of that size? Something like 380 employees. And put them to work on an MMO, a game that won't even exist for 4-5 years. It's just bananas. It's a miracle they shipped Reckoning at all; or rather, that Big Huge was going out of business and they bought them and they had the RPG already in production that would become Reckoning.

Shit. 1.2 million copies of a new IP is something that should be considered an accomplishment.

And shame on EA for not supporting the game better. They totally are not paying attention to the MSRP on that thing. It's still $52 new, and it came out in February. How are they supposed to keep sales moving? You're supposed to knock down the price every few weeks, and bring in the next "waves" of purchasers. Gamers waiting for it to be $40 and $30 and $20. Stop sleeping on the job, EA.

1.2 million copies is considered a failure? Is this what the industry has turned into?

@Sword5 said:

And the story gets much worse - http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012/5/25/3043282/38-studios-downfall-leads-to-second-mortgages-for-some-employees

Terrible people ran that company.

Not sure I'd say "terrible," but it was incredibly ignorant. They didn't seem to understand the enormity of the investment required for an MMO. Even Runic Games understood that they had to release other games to even get in a secure line of funds. Kurt & Co. seemed to think they could just do the MMO and make the money that way. Even Reckoning was just an existing in-development game that got the name Amalur slapped on it when Big Huge got bought. Just people who didn't know dick about the realities of MMO development trying to make an MMO.

EDIT:

38 Studios laid off all 379 employees, 288 of them in Rhode Island, yesterday afternoon in a terse email. Sources tell Polygon that the company had not been communicating with employees, or paying them, for nearly a month prior to the mass layoffs.

Yeah, they were terrible.