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Note: I'm not sure whether this should be in the general forum or sports and games, so I'm posting it in general.
Article:
38 Studios, in a move surprising absolutely no one, has declared bankruptcy. This report comes hot on the heels of the news that the Project Copernicus developer has laid off all of its employees and sold Big Huge Games. In addition to covering the bankruptcy, the Providence Journal revealed that "state and federal authorities have launched an investigation into [the company]."
State police Col. Steven G. O'Donnell states that the inquiry is taking place "to investigate activities that have recently come to light at 38 Studios." According to the Journal, these activities include taking out loans totaling $8.5 million US "based on state film tax credits that had not yet been issued." Things are looking pretty grim for Curt Schilling and his studio, but we'll just have to stay tuned to see how the rest of this plays out.
http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/06/07/38-studios-declares-bankruptcy-law-enforcement-investigating/
tl; dr
38 Studios, creators of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, declared bankruptcy after laying off their entire staff.
I think that this shows how difficult it is to come out with a brand new game in today's market because pretty much all of the games that do well are sequels to popular games that did well or are still doing well. This really sucks for them, but it shows that having a big budget doesn't always mean having a lot of sales or even a good game.
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It was a bad game. Too long, too stretched, incredibly bad camera. Boring fetchquests that would take you through the entire map to complete, quest items and bosses that would only spawn once you had the quest leading to tons of backtracking into explored areas...
Like Skyrim, I didn't even finish it I was so bored by the end.
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I had not heard of this company, was Reckoning their only game?
@Jinsho how exactly do you "finish" skyrim?
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On June 08 2012 03:46 PassiveAce wrote:
I had not heard of this company, was Reckoning their only game?
@Jinsho how exactly do you "finish" skyrim?
Yes, Reckoning was their only game.
I played some of it myself, but I stopped playing after a while because for me single player and questing don't really fit.
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I thought that 38 different studios had declared bankruptcy there for a bit.
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On June 08 2012 03:41 Ettick wrote:
tl; dr
38 Studios, creators of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, declared bankruptcy after laying off their entire staff.
I think that this shows how difficult it is to come out with a brand new game in today's market because pretty much all of the games that do well are sequels to popular games that did well or are still doing well. This really sucks for them, but it shows that having a big budget doesn't always mean having a lot of sales or even a good game.
They did have good sales; the company was just horrendously mismanaged. If you "need 3 million sales to break even" (as has been stated for KoA:R), something's wrong.
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United States5162 Posts
Well that's a shame. I heard they were having major trouble a few weeks ago, but didn't think it would fall apart this quickly. Curt really seemed genuinely passionate about producing quality games.
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Shamelessly stolen from another forum:
38 Studios LLC said it owes between $100 million and $500 million to at least 1,000 creditors, many of them in Rhode Island, court documents show. The parent company estimated its assets at between $10 million and $50 million and told the court it does not expect it will have any funds available to pay off unsecured creditors.
Two other subsidiaries, Mercury Project LLC and Precision Jobs LLC, each disclosed $100 million to $500 million in liabilities owed to fewer than 49 creditors, along with less than $50,000 in assets.
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On June 08 2012 03:46 PassiveAce wrote:
I had not heard of this company, was Reckoning their only game?
@Jinsho how exactly do you "finish" skyrim?
You "finish" it by completing the main story arc.
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lol i thought you meant 38 different studios had declared bankruptcy to begin with XD not some back water company that i have not heard of before. (i heard of the game, but it takes a company to produce multiple successful games for me to remember them)
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On June 08 2012 03:46 PassiveAce wrote:
I had not heard of this company, was Reckoning their only game?
@Jinsho how exactly do you "finish" skyrim?
38 Bought BHG, who were developing Reckoning, and released it as 38's first game.
The follow was being developed by 38 in Rhode Island (different studio to BHG). This was an MMO game codenamed Copernicus.
38 Studios was mostly financed by Curt Schilling who owned more than 80% of the company that he started. The second biggest contributor was the state of Rhode Island which loaned $48 million to 38 studios.
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Some horrible management basically. Reckoning sold over a million copies, which is fucking fantastic for a first game and it still wasn't enough to keep them afloat (they had to sell 3 million).
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On June 08 2012 03:51 Maginor wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2012 03:46 PassiveAce wrote:
I had not heard of this company, was Reckoning their only game?
@Jinsho how exactly do you "finish" skyrim? You "finish" it by completing the main story arc.
I respectfully disagree but this is offtopic.
Thanks to those who answered my other question 
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I found KoA:R way more enjoyable than diablo3 from a general design point of view (no frustrating bugs like aoe bigger than their animation or unkillable mobs like some act3+ inferno blues, cool storyline, no mandatory gear level to progress..) and even if those games are not really comparable, it's sad to see this company declare bankrupcy while having made somewhat a better game than blizzard, maybe because they like what they do, while blizzard releases unfinished and untested games and still makes incredible amounts of money just because of their fanbase..
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They got a loan from the state of Rhode Island because the state was trying to set up either a tech or entertainment industry or both. The police investigation centers around the owners, like Schilling, paying themselves money when they knew the company was in trouble.
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Well... Never heard of them, I feel bad for their employees though.
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Montenegro10532 Posts
On June 08 2012 03:55 gullberg wrote:
Some horrible management basically. Reckoning sold over a million copies, which is fucking fantastic for a first game and it still wasn't enough to keep them afloat (they had to sell 3 million).
They sunk most of their time/money into developing the actual KoA MMO. I'm not sure, but I would assume Reckoning only happened when they realized they're already in a huge mess and needed to sell a game ASAP, and sell it big.
That said, the game was marketed very aggressively, hit the market at a perfect time and oversold by a lot. I doubt the next Amalur IP game would have gotten anywhere near the same sales.
Overall, even disregarding business and management, they did a lot of things textbook wrong when it comes to actual development and design.
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That game sucked... thats why they failed. It's not that hard to make a game in today's industry, its just hard to make a good one. That being said, even if its not that great, you should still be able to manage your money and not go bankrupt...
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They either got scammed or at least caught in some hard-to-predict financial trap. Reckoning may not be your 'holy shit everybody's play this game' game, but it was succesful nonetheless. This was a rather explosive way of going bankrupt.
I love chakrams. The chakram combat animation (althought terribly blocky poly and cheap bloom) is the sexiest thing I've seen in RPG/MMORPG.
But I played this game after Skyrim so it was kind of a 'ehhhhhhhhhhhhhh'. But I still bought it and recommended it to my friends :/
Still though, for first video game? It was groundbreaking for themselves.
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Reckoning sales are irrellevent.
They bought BHG when Reckoning was almost complete, and then EA published it. Reckoning was only a tiny ammount of their outgoings.
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EPT
