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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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).
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..
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.
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.
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...
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.
the game was a piece of shit, basically a mmo single player game. i bought because of the day9 playnight or whatever it was called and i deinstalled after 2 hours because i didnt care one single bit.
I saw this on on Day9 too. He interviewed Schlling and McFarlane and they all tried to hype it up. Watched some play through but didn't look like anything interesting.
On June 08 2012 03:41 Ettick wrote: 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.
their game sold well. it was their stupid fucking loan of 75 mil that was the mistake.
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?
However you want to define it.. For me it meant stopping after spending 40h exploring and finding nothing interesting. Which is the same way I felt about exploring in Amalur : there was tons of content, but it was all low level, irrelevant, unchallenging, samey, and really boring.
I'd heard that they wanted to make the Amalur IP into movies, books, comics, whatever. Too bad it's worth nothing now.
For some time I was looking for good RPG on my PS3 (because there are no rpgs beside Skyrim, and no FFXIII doesnt count) watched some day9 videos playing it and I actuallu bought it. It was bad. I do not feel sad about this news .
These are "rock star" game companies. New emerging company gets huge influx of cash to deliver a product, and then it's sink or swim. Too bad to hear from 38 Studios
I think i saw a article saying they were still going to bring out reckoning dlc + that new game they were working on though. If not i'd be sad i really enjoyed reckoning.
The long and short of it is Rhode Island is fucked LOL... oh the OP doesn't actually cover any of that.
Rhode Island, in the economic slump the rest of us were/are, inticed 38 Studios to come to Rhode Island through giant preferential loans and tax credits. The company failed and now Rhode Island owns it. The first problem is it wasn't worth a fraction of what they loaned. The second problem is all of the creative developers have already jumped ship. So basically Rhode Island bought the box to a toy, the toy was broken and then the toy left to go play with a different kid. Now all Rhode Island has is an empty, soggy box that nobody wants.
On June 08 2012 03:50 Bourneq wrote: I thought that 38 different studios had declared bankruptcy there for a bit.
...yeah. That would have been a much bigger deal.
Was Reckoning actually any good? I'd feel bad for them if they put out an amazing game and it got ignored because it wasn't an established franchise, but if it was bad-to-mediocre it's pretty much their own fault.
On June 08 2012 03:50 Bourneq wrote: I thought that 38 different studios had declared bankruptcy there for a bit.
...yeah. That would have been a much bigger deal.
Was Reckoning actually any good? I'd feel bad for them if they put out an amazing game and it got ignored because it wasn't an established franchise, but if it was bad-to-mediocre it's pretty much their own fault.
think of WoW with better combat. Then you get Amalur.
originally they wanted to release an MMO but they didnt have the money so they made it a single player game.
On June 08 2012 03:50 Bourneq wrote: I thought that 38 different studios had declared bankruptcy there for a bit.
...yeah. That would have been a much bigger deal.
Was Reckoning actually any good? I'd feel bad for them if they put out an amazing game and it got ignored because it wasn't an established franchise, but if it was bad-to-mediocre it's pretty much their own fault.
It was more like mediocre-to-good than bad-to-mediocre, maybe 7/10ish with a few standout elements but overall feeling incomplete and unrefined.
It certainly didn't get ignored, quite the contrary actually. People who marketed that game did a sick job.
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).
This exactly.
All things considered the game didn't do terribly, and wasn't all bad (with a coop multiplayer I bet it would have seen even much higher sales, it just felt missing from this style of game). Just didn't add up for them.
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).
This exactly.
All things considered the game didn't do terribly, and wasn't all bad (with a coop multiplayer I bet it would have seen even much higher sales, it just felt missing from this style of game). Just didn't add up for them.
It's cause they were staffed for an MMO but were unable to attain any additional funding other than the government's. It's not unusual to get funds of that sort when building games like that, they were unable to get it. That 3 million quote is to break even, but that's not expected for all new IP- the point of the first game is usually to get the name out there and get the later games to sell better.
Brings painful memories of Presto Studios going bankrupt 2 decades ago. The Journeyman Project series was an awesome game and still wasn't enough to let them stay afloat.
Ah I didn't notice till I looked on wiki that "Curt Schilling" is actually the former MLB player Curt Schilling... such a shame it all turned out this way.
This is kind of old news. I think I read about it on Ars a week or two ago. It's made to sound a lot worse than it is here, implying mismanagement and shady dealings, or something like that.
Essentially, Rhode Islands wanted to get a video game development company to move to Rhode Islands, and offered up $75 million as incentive. 38 Studios took that offer, but in hindsight, it's a fairly stupid deal for all parties involved. Packing up and moving an entire business, along with meeting development deadlines along with payment schedules, is somewhat unrealistic.
End of the day, 38 Studios probably could have been a moderate success had they not been sucked into Rhode Islands' financial incentives.
EDIT: Just realized the article I read about was about 38 Studios having to lay off most of its staff. So...Bankruptcy was basically inevitable.
Rumor has it, they ended up spending a lot of money on employee residencies and moving people to RI. Essentially, terrible mishandling of money, but a superb development staff.
That game had potential...too bad they didn't meet it. It was too easy and too repetitive. More variety in quests and better dungeon layouts would have gone a long way. A deeper combat system and actual challenge in the game would have made it a great game...
Curt Schilling: hey rhode island da you know that game world of warcraft? it makies 10000000+ a year lets do it Rhode Island: Wow, i cant think of anyone better to make a fantasy rpg for nerds then a proffesional baseball player
Rhode island unemployment: ~12%
on the plus side my manager told me today im not getting fired after all so things are looking up rhode island
On June 08 2012 11:36 Rinny wrote: Curt Schilling: hey rhode island da you know that game world of warcraft? it makies 10000000+ a year lets do it Rhode Island: Wow, i cant think of anyone better to make a fantasy rpg for nerds then a proffesional baseball player
Rhode island unemployment: ~12%
on the plus side my manager told me today im not getting fired after all so things are looking up rhode island
To be fair to Schilling, he has plenty of nerd cred (lol, did I just write that?)
Check out this interview from 2001, for example. Those who followed baseball closely in the latter part of Schilling's career were likely to hear about his exploits in EQ at one point or another.
As far as i know there only game KOAR, and my opinion of it was that it was kinda average + Show Spoiler +
I played on hardest difficulty and did all the side quests in the first area, which took about 6 hours, was incredibly boring and made you overpowered as shit. The faction system was an absolute piece of crap and you simply couldn't do any side quest, even on hard... even the very few "fun" ones, since you would get to overpowerd and 1 shoot everything. The "story" picked up a little bit in the 3rd/4th areas, and it was really nice at the very beginning of area 4. That said the "final" area, which should have been the "epic" battle that rewarded you for having all the abilities you do by throwing hard enemies and a very hard boss, was a face roll... The last fucking boss, which lore wise had god like power and thus they had a lot of potential with it.... was FUCKING DOG SHIT !
And i would have "forgiven" KOA, many would have, if you actually had something to fucking fight that doesn't die from 1 button press, koa had great combat mechanics and specs... and most of all it had "mobility" in terms of which spec you chose to use, it was really easy to change gear with crafting every 5-10 level and respec to something new, and it was fun to change from mage to mage-warrior to mage-rogue... but the game was still a complete face roll.
Now putting out an averag/kinda bad rpg won't make me kill you, especially if its not a sequel to great rpg ( like DA2 and ME3 were, to give recent examples )... most critics encouraged it, but the problem was that this game might have had more content than skyrim, and it was done by a team that obviously had less experience ( tho most of them were "big names" in the industry, they didn't had the synergy of Bethesda )... problem is that most of the "side" content was shit compared to skyrim.
That basically made it a high cost development, high development time, no hype to have millions of pre orders and cows buying it blindly due to sequel/developer, A game like that doesn't afford being anything else than close to game of the year if it wants to be success and still needs to be a very good game if it wants to "cover" its cost an average profit.
It wasn't, and if anyone thought it was/thought they could make it, that person was a retard and its better to see these great developers take jobs for other studious with better leadership.
On June 08 2012 03:45 Jinsho wrote: 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.
I thought it was way worse than Skyrim... at least skyrim can be pretty good with mods and looks very pretty. KOA:R was the biggest disappointment I've had in my entire gamer life. I also think it's among the worst stories in a video game ever.
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.
you make it sound like games can just be created instantly. not every company is similar to EA that can spew out a new football game every couple of weeks if they wanted to.
Well this makes me feel pretty bad for pirating it, but I wouldn't have even played it otherwise. Was a fun enough game, but I wouldn't pay over £15 for it. Edit: Also played through it all on hard and was no challenge at all, didn't even do many side quests because it just felt too easy that it was simply running round doing chores. Almost as imbalanced as + Show Spoiler +
I played the demo on PS3, the combat was pretty fun but nothing in the game made me interested in continuing any further, much less actually buying the game. They made the dumbest move you can in the entire industry, they tried to break into the market with an MMORPG which as many of you know, it's pretty much impossible to compete with WoW. When they realized it wasn't going to work without an established name, they turned it into a single player game that had no single player appeal at all. They put all of their money on this hand so they kinda deserve this happening, although it's sad so many lost their jobs because of shit business decisions from the executives.
The game was waaay overhyped with EA publishing it and Salvatore writing the lore for it. I'm sorry that the employees lost their job except for the ones who designed the inventory system. I mean, Sykrim's inventory system was archaic too but this was 2 steps below that.
On June 09 2012 01:33 valaki wrote: The game was waaay overhyped with EA publishing it and Salvatore writing the lore for it. I'm sorry that the employees lost their job except for the ones who designed the inventory system. I mean, Sykrim's inventory system was archaic too but this was 2 steps below that.
i totally agree, although i think it's one of the smaller things, i still can't believe RPGs these days could take such gigantic leaps backwards in terms of basic things such as inventory.
Such a shame. I was looking forward to what ideas they had with their upcoming MMO.
On June 08 2012 03:45 Jinsho wrote: 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.
On June 08 2012 03:45 Jinsho wrote: 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.
I loved Skyrim. I guess I'll try KoA then.
Dont, Skyrim is amazing. KoA is just crap with more crap controls. I only tried it because of day9, never will try anything again. (its that bad)
On June 09 2012 02:18 1ntrigue wrote: Such a shame. I was looking forward to what ideas they had with their upcoming MMO.
On June 08 2012 03:45 Jinsho wrote: 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.
I loved Skyrim. I guess I'll try KoA then.
Dont, Skyrim is amazing. KoA is just crap with more crap controls. I only tried it because of day9, never will try anything again. (its that bad)
My cousin/friend swears its the best game. I was bored to tears watching it.
I find the story behind KoA:R and Curt Schilling and 38 Studios fascinating, to be honest. That company going under is one of the biggest failures in video game history, I think.
That's a terrific article on the whole thing, and I recommend reading it. It's largely Curt Schilling's fault, it seems, but he's not a bad guy.
1. One of the most incompetent people you could ever put in control of a company
or
2. It was run by a thief with a degree who cashed out big time by burning the place to the ground.
The ammount of debt they build up, contrasting with the work they did, just doesn't add up. They were 150 million in debt, but only had 22 million in assets.
Are you kidding me? There is a serious case of fraud, or the people behind the wheel just didn't know what the hell they were doing.
But thats not really the point, TL members not liking it or not is irrelevent, the game was still decently successful. It sold 1.2M copies which is great for such a game, from a relativly unknown studios. And its also a new IP.
The problem was just the debt the studio endured was out of proportion for such a small company. If a company relies on its first game selling 3Million just to break even, either its a big management failure or the project is just too big. I mean all this is sad but it really looks amateurish and poor decisions, the game quality isn't to blame.
I find the story behind KoA:R and Curt Schilling and 38 Studios fascinating, to be honest. That company going under is one of the biggest failures in video game history, I think.
That's a terrific article on the whole thing, and I recommend reading it. It's largely Curt Schilling's fault, it seems, but he's not a bad guy.
Great article, thanks for linking. My favorite part was when a former employee described the company's downfall as the result of Curt Schilling's "rampant and destructive optimism."
Poll: Your initial reaction upon glanced at the thread title:
"Ohhhhh daaaaaang 38 separate studios went bankrupt?? Must read more" (20)
57%
"Oh no, 38 Studios -- that one company that made a game or two -- went under!" (15)
43%
35 total votes
Your vote: Your initial reaction upon glanced at the thread title:
(Vote): "Oh no, 38 Studios -- that one company that made a game or two -- went under!" (Vote): "Ohhhhh daaaaaang 38 separate studios went bankrupt?? Must read more"
On June 08 2012 04:26 SilverLeagueElite wrote: I saw this on on Day9 too. He interviewed Schlling and McFarlane and they all tried to hype it up. Watched some play through but didn't look like anything interesting.
Yeah I remember Sean doing a segment with them in the Games and Sports section a while back. I knew Schilling was one of the go to guys meh.
I followed this story fairly closely and it seems that Kurt Schilling's grand aspirations got in the way of important financial and business decisions that ultimately brought the entire studio to closure.
While I have great admiration for people who publicly speak of their own dreams and ambitions (Peter Molyneux is a great example of such a person), I find it a little hard to sympathize with Schilling because it was his decisions that caused the unemployment of literally hundreds of people in this studio. It's fine for someone like him to speak of his ambitions, it's another to bring misfortune to others in the pursue of it.
Bought the game because of Day9, but never really played far into it. Sucks the company went bankrupt though, and that taxpayers have to pay for it now (I think?). I don't know anything about economics or whatever, though, so don't quote me on it, haha.
On July 31 2012 14:16 StateofReverie wrote: I wish EA would go bankrupt or do some restructuring at least but alas, their cod and sims series are too strong!
On July 31 2012 13:13 Nos- wrote: I find it a little hard to sympathize with Schilling because it was his decisions that caused the unemployment of literally hundreds of people in this studio. It's fine for someone like him to speak of his ambitions, it's another to bring misfortune to others in the pursue of it.
Could you please elaborate on what decisions and which ambitions brought misfortune to others ? It's my understanding that he invested millions of $'s and lost most of his personal fortune trying to create something. Of course, those millions went to pay salaries of people who he provided employment for.
On July 31 2012 13:13 Nos- wrote: I find it a little hard to sympathize with Schilling because it was his decisions that caused the unemployment of literally hundreds of people in this studio. It's fine for someone like him to speak of his ambitions, it's another to bring misfortune to others in the pursue of it.
Could you please elaborate on what decisions and which ambitions brought misfortune to others ? It's my understanding that he invested millions of $'s and lost most of his personal fortune trying to create something. Of course, those millions went to pay salaries of people who he provided employment for.
Reposting a link someone else posted a few pages back.
Red 5 studios picked up about a dozen of the former 38 studios designers/programmers/yadayada. They're currently working on a game called Firefall which looks pretty promising.
On July 31 2012 13:13 Nos- wrote: I find it a little hard to sympathize with Schilling because it was his decisions that caused the unemployment of literally hundreds of people in this studio. It's fine for someone like him to speak of his ambitions, it's another to bring misfortune to others in the pursue of it.
Could you please elaborate on what decisions and which ambitions brought misfortune to others ? It's my understanding that he invested millions of $'s and lost most of his personal fortune trying to create something. Of course, those millions went to pay salaries of people who he provided employment for.
Reposting a link someone else posted a few pages back.
Basically Curt Schilling had no idea how to run a business.
I have not finished this particular article yet but so far it's been a very detailed re-account of what happened. If you're interested in knowing more I'd suggest reading the entire thing.
On July 31 2012 13:13 Nos- wrote: I find it a little hard to sympathize with Schilling because it was his decisions that caused the unemployment of literally hundreds of people in this studio. It's fine for someone like him to speak of his ambitions, it's another to bring misfortune to others in the pursue of it.
Could you please elaborate on what decisions and which ambitions brought misfortune to others ? It's my understanding that he invested millions of $'s and lost most of his personal fortune trying to create something. Of course, those millions went to pay salaries of people who he provided employment for.
Reposting a link someone else posted a few pages back.
Basically Curt Schilling had no idea how to run a business.
I have not finished this particular article yet but so far it's been a very detailed re-account of what happened. If you're interested in knowing more I'd suggest reading the entire thing.
It's an interesting look into what happens when a video game fan with a large checkbook and no experience attempts to make the decisions. Some people around here and other game sites should take notes. It can't be all about the employees and the game, you can't have everything.
On the story, I enjoyed it, but I am conflicted. On the one hand, I of course admire his attempt, even if he failed, to make something awesome. And, in fairness, for the first game a studio put out, Kingdoms of Amalur wasn't terrible. And given proper management, it possibly would've made a decent amount of money for the company.
But on the other hand, I'm disgusted that he'd ask for help from the government. This is not capitalism. This is not what you believed in before you started a company. You've got to be more of a man than to waste people's money, against their will, on a stupid game. On that hand, I find it despicable. You are the reason people don't believe in capitalism anymore.
EPT
