38 Studios and Big Huge Game Gone

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Q-BZ

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http://blogs.wpri.com/2012/05/24/38-studio-lays-off-its-entire-staff/

Utterly hideous news. The taxpayers will get the shaft yet again for another government mistake and all of these people are being punished when the folks that made the monetary decisions should be the ones getting punished.

Sickening.


I wish I could edit thread title. It's Big Huge Games.



http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1038765926#post1038765926

Front page news thread although I posted this thread 30 minutes earlier. ;)
 
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Whats sad is the guy who is currently in charge at RI took the fall for this even though it was the previous guys plan and contract. Funny how that is these days.

I hold nothing against 38 studios they obviously had some neat ideas but I just can't see how the RI dept who set this up could have been so stupid as to spend 100 million on a bunch of nobodies.

Public funding actually isn't new though new to the US. The Legend of Grimlock title was partially publicly funded by Finland. Stalker received public funding as well, but nothing of that magnitude. God what a terrible terrible idea.
 
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Q-BZ said:
http://blogs.wpri.com/2012/05/24/38-studio-lays-off-its-entire-staff/

Utterly hideous news. The taxpayers will get the shaft yet again for another government mistake and all of these people are being punished when the folks that made the monetary decisions should be the ones getting punished.

Sickening.


I wish I could edit thread title. It's Big Huge Games.



http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1038765926#post1038765926

Front page news thread although I posted this thread 30 minutes earlier. ;)
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I agree. It sucks that the taxpayers are now responsible for $112M.:mad:
 
I feel bad for Schilling. He's a good guy and he's obviously very invested (~$30 mil of his money) in the company. I have been eagerly awaiting the Copernicus project since they announced it a couple years ago. Sad to think we probably won't see it come to fruition.
 
EPOQ said:
I feel bad for Schilling. He's a good guy and he's obviously very invested (~$30 mil of his money) in the company. I have been eagerly awaiting the Copernicus project since they announced it a couple years ago. Sad to think we probably won't see it come to fruition.
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The guy is a hypocrite and scum bag. He has gone on several long public rants about how people should be self sufficient and the government should not help private citizens. This proved to actually be true only if your name isn't Curt Shilling. After MA wouldn't give him state funding, he moved his entire operation to RI because he decided to take some of that government aid he is so very much against. Another jackass who doesn't follow what he preaches. I have no love for the guy.

On a positive note, Turbine INC based in MA held a job fair in Providence this week looking to lure some of the developers to their studio. Since Boston is only about an hour from Providence hopefully some of the developers from 38 will be able to quickly return to work.
 
A shame, but Kingdom of Amalur was nothing special. It was another middle of the road RPGs. I am surprised by this news, because I did know quite a few people who purchased Kingdom of Amalur. I figured it would have at least broke even at the very least. But maybe it was ultimately "copernicus" that killed off the studio.
 
EPOQ said:
I feel bad for Schilling. He's a good guy and he's obviously very invested (~$30 mil of his money) in the company. I have been eagerly awaiting the Copernicus project since they announced it a couple years ago. Sad to think we probably won't see it come to fruition.
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Good guys don't fire all their employees with zero notice as well as having their medical insurance expire at midnight the same day.
 
EPOQ said:
I feel bad for Schilling. He's a good guy and he's obviously very invested (~$30 mil of his money) in the company. I have been eagerly awaiting the Copernicus project since they announced it a couple years ago. Sad to think we probably won't see it come to fruition.
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I don't feel sorry for him one bit. Prior to KoA's launch he was on the official forums making huge promises and saying shit like "judge us based on our actions. You'll see we're not like other studios that abandon their games after release". As soon as the game launched he vanished from the forums and guess what they abandoned the game. They promised fixes that never materialized and instead of patches they released paid DLC. So fuck Schilling.
 
"the company is suffering from an economic downturn"

aka

"the company is suffering because it up-chucked a bunch of mediocre and unprofitable games"
 
I enjoyed Amalur but it wasnt a great game by any means, how in the hell did they spend all that money and have nothing but a mediocre game to show for it?
 
Mugen13 said:
I enjoyed Amalur but it wasnt a great game by any means, how in the hell did they spend all that money and have nothing but a mediocre game to show for it?
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Actually all the money they got from RI had nothing to do with KoA. It was all for the MMO. EA helped fund KoA.
 
Derangel said:
Actually all the money they got from RI had nothing to do with KoA. It was all for the MMO. EA helped fund KoA.
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I didnt know that, I knew they had an MMO in the works but didnt think thats how they blew all their money...

I guess so though.
 
GoldenTiger said:
Well, bioware did twice that for swtor....
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But Tor wasn't/isn't considered a flop. It still has a respectable base of 1Mill and initially sold well. Amalur only sold 450k iirc and wasn't received well. I enjoyed it for what it was though.

I'm interested in the MMO they were making though, like what the setting was and what made it so ambitious..
 
Mugen13 said:
But Tor wasn't/isn't considered a flop. It still has a respectable base of 1Mill and initially sold well. Amalur only sold 450k iirc and wasn't received well. I enjoyed it for what it was though.

I'm interested in the MMO they were making though, like what the setting was and what made it so ambitious..
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KoA sold something like 1.4 million. It sold well above EA's expectations.
 
Derangel said:
KoA sold something like 1.4 million. It sold well above EA's expectations.
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I just googled it and ever report save for vgchartz has it at under 500k, vgchartz has it at just over 500k world wide. It wasn't a failure per se but it wasn't a smash hit either.
 
Mugen13 said:
I enjoyed Amalur but it wasnt a great game by any means, how in the hell did they spend all that money and have nothing but a mediocre game to show for it?
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Well just looking at Amalur, I think they over-developed it. There is a lot of "content" in there that people don't really care about. Even my friends that "Do every quest in every zone in every game" got burnt out trying to keep up with all the filler junk in Amalur. I think if they ripped out a lot of the filler and focused on the main story and a few branching paths, it would have been much better. The number of dungeons is ridiculous, things just get repetitive and there is so much loot and unbalanced socket upgrading, gear really didn't matter (not to mention the OP crafting...). Feels like they spent money on stuff which actually made the game *worse*. It was a single player RPG, not a MMO...

The combat wasn't even terrible, it just needed a bit of tweaking to balance it out. Instead we got a game world the size of a MMO, tons of bad voice acted junk quests, and hundreds(?) of dungeons that really didn't look any better than the previous dungeons you were in.
 
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KoA made up for its generic design with a ridiculous amount of content and an enjoyable combat system. It's sad that its developers have got this as a reward.
 
Plague_Injected said:
KoA made up for its generic design with a ridiculous amount of content and an enjoyable combat system. It's sad that its developers have got this as a reward.
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A ridiculous amount of boring, poorly written, insanely repetitive content, and a piss easy combat system that could never provide a real challenge even on hard. Then after on patch they stopped supporting the title and instead released paid DLC content.
 
Derangel said:
A ridiculous amount of boring, poorly written, insanely repetitive content, and a piss easy combat system that could never provide a real challenge even on hard. Then after on patch they stopped supporting the title and instead released paid DLC content.
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Here you were one of the biggest boosters of the thing going into it and to a lesser extent I was, too. ;)


Games tank on sales all the time and it doesn't lead to a disaster like this. As you indicated in another post, KOA sales were actually fairly decent all things considered.




Mugen13 said:
Hmmm, if that's true that's not bad at all. NPD shows different but who better to know how many games sold then the studio head. Too bad those sales couldn't keep them afloat :(
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Just for laughs: What kind of sales would KOA of had to have to "save the company" ?

World of Warcraft levels maybe? That's kind of an interesting sidebar although, sadly, moot.
 
EPOQ said:
I feel bad for Schilling. He's a good guy and he's obviously very invested (~$30 mil of his money) in the company. I have been eagerly awaiting the Copernicus project since they announced it a couple years ago. Sad to think we probably won't see it come to fruition.
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disagree

demingo said:
The guy is a hypocrite and scum bag. He has gone on several long public rants about how people should be self sufficient and the government should not help private citizens. This proved to actually be true only if your name isn't Curt Shilling. After MA wouldn't give him state funding, he moved his entire operation to RI because he decided to take some of that government aid he is so very much against. Another jackass who doesn't follow what he preaches. I have no love for the guy.

On a positive note, Turbine INC based in MA held a job fair in Providence this week looking to lure some of the developers to their studio. Since Boston is only about an hour from Providence hopefully some of the developers from 38 will be able to quickly return to work.
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agree

Derangel said:
I don't feel sorry for him one bit. Prior to KoA's launch he was on the official forums making huge promises and saying shit like "judge us based on our actions. You'll see we're not like other studios that abandon their games after release". As soon as the game launched he vanished from the forums and guess what they abandoned the game. They promised fixes that never materialized and instead of patches they released paid DLC. So fuck Schilling.
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agree

Godmachine said:
I wouldn't ... he's an asshole :

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1038767256&postcount=53
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agree
 
ocellaris said:
Well just looking at Amalur, I think they over-developed it. There is a lot of "content" in there that people don't really care about. Even my friends that "Do every quest in every zone in every game" got burnt out trying to keep up with all the filler junk in Amalur. I think if they ripped out a lot of the filler and focused on the main story and a few branching paths, it would have been much better. The number of dungeons is ridiculous, things just get repetitive and there is so much loot and unbalanced socket upgrading, gear really didn't matter (not to mention the OP crafting...). Feels like they spent money on stuff which actually made the game *worse*. It was a single player RPG, not a MMO...

The combat wasn't even terrible, it just needed a bit of tweaking to balance it out. Instead we got a game world the size of a MMO, tons of bad voice acted junk quests, and hundreds(?) of dungeons that really didn't look any better than the previous dungeons you were in.
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Yea I got burnt out really early on too and just finished up the main quest line, I would have really liked the game had it had some sort of discenable story..
 
Plague_Injected said:
KoA made up for its generic design with a ridiculous amount of content and an enjoyable combat system. It's sad that its developers have got this as a reward.
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The combat was the only thing refreshing about the game and kept me going on, I almost put it down for good on several occasions but the combat was a lot fun!
 
Q-BZ said:
Just for laughs: What kind of sales would KOA of had to have to "save the company" ?

World of Warcraft levels maybe? That's kind of an interesting sidebar although, sadly, moot.
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Honestly I dont know what kind of sales it would have to have to save the company, its almost as if 38 studios was doomed from the beginning.

I would imagine WoW or COD levels though, but one million sales in 90 days isnt too shabby in this day and age.
 
Mugen13 said:
Hmmm, if that's true that's not bad at all. NPD shows different but who better to know how many games sold then the studio head. Too bad those sales couldn't keep them afloat :(
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1.2 Million by today's standards for a game like KoA is not a success really. Its better than 500,000 for sure but unless its an indie game , for the amount of money dumped into that studio its really not that great.
 
Godmachine said:
1.2 Million by today's standards for a game like KoA is not a success really. Its better than 500,000 for sure but unless its an indie game , for the amount of money dumped into that studio its really not that great.
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Yea I had no idea how much money that studio has gone through in what is a pretty short amount of time and they have not much to show for it.

I feel for the people of RI..
 
Q-BZ said:
Just for laughs: What kind of sales would KOA of had to have to "save the company" ?

World of Warcraft levels maybe? That's kind of an interesting sidebar although, sadly, moot.
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According to Rhode Island's governor they would have needed something like 3 million sales.

Godmachine said:
1.2 Million by today's standards for a game like KoA is not a success really. Its better than 500,000 for sure but unless its an indie game , for the amount of money dumped into that studio its really not that great.
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1.2 million is above what EA expected it to sale. Going above expectations means it was successful. The amount of money dumped into 38 was almost entirely for the MMO.
 
Derangel said:
1.2 million is above what EA expected it to sale. Going above expectations means it was successful. The amount of money dumped into 38 was almost entirely for the MMO.
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Remember EA was just the publisher. They only needed to make back the cost of marketing/distribution. So what EA needed it to sell for them to make a profit is different than what 38 Studios needed.
 
demingo said:
Remember EA was just the publisher. They only needed to make back the cost of marketing/distribution. So what EA needed it to sell for them to make a profit is different than what 38 Studios needed.
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EA funded something like half of the development cost.
 
http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012...-leads-to-second-mortgages-for-some-employees
harsaphes just posted this in PC gaming and I figure it deserves to be posted here too

It blows my mind how many retards are on the forum blaming RI. I noticed the following misconceptions;

Myth: RI gave the developer money.
fact: RI guaranteed to pay back the $75 million loan a bank gave the developer, if the developer did not pay the loan. RI did not loan any money.

Myth: RI tricked the developer
Fact: The developer signed the papers for the loan, papers which stated what needed to be done in order to receive the loan money.

Myth: RI did not give the developer all the money owed.
Fact: The developer knew that $25 million had to be held in reserve to pay part of the loan back in case they defaulted. The developer also knew what milestones had to be hit in order to continue receiving money.

Curt Shilling bent his employees, and the state of RI over a pickle barrel and raped them with a pineapple with his lies and bull crap. Shilling, the former Governor, and every board member in RI that voted to sign for the loan should do serious jail time.
 
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