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Report: 38 Studios lays off entire staff
monarc333
Member UncommonPosts: 622
Check this article out. Its a report so not veryfied but if it is true, its a collossal failure. Ive been following this company from inception and its really, really sad to see this happen. Lets hope this report is not true.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/05/24/report-38-studios-lays-off-entire-staff
Comments
It is proably true.
Various sites reports + some former workers tweeters & blogs confirm it as well.
Also there is rumor (source : kotaku) that 38 studios did not play nice with not paying & not telling that workers health insurance is going to end like tommorow.
http://kotaku.com/5913102/rumor-38-studios-shutting-down-big-huge-games
It seems it's been verified. 38 Studios is going under.
Bren
while(horse==dead)
{
beat();
}
All the more reason to buy your own health insurance and be responsible for yourself. It definately sucks to lose one's job, however, in the volatile gaming industry one should expect this to happen from time to time and to prepare for it as best you can.
Here's hoping that the employees land on their feet.
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That's so funny.... Most of my clients that buy their own health insurance pay between 12K and 24K a year. When you're a solo proprietor or partner in a small firm.. You don't get good deals. You pay through the nose.
Now, if you're 21 and buy crap policies... Yeah, sure... But it's not practical for the average family.
The payroll for this company must have been insane....I heard they had around 380 or so employees, and when you consider the big names among some of them it was way too much....Curt had good intentions Im sure but he was in wayyyyy over his head.
What a tragedy.
Schilling was awesome to watch in the world series, bloody ankle and all.
Alas, he clearly was no business leader. 300+ is a crazy amount of employees for a new company.
Im sure Im not the only one who is wondering what they 'could have' done with 50+ million dollars to make an online game.
Im thinking a mmorpg diablo clone that runs on the iphone.
-Blitz
Werewolf Online(R) - Lead Developer
I'm f*ck now their bill is gonna come out my taxes.
The fact that nobody came in to rescue the Copernicus project doesn't seem to say anything very positive about how it was being developed and/or what state it's currently in, despite claims that we could be playing it within the year.
10 years ago I spent countless days and nights playing Big Huge Games classic RTS called Rise of Nations which, I feel, was one of the best RTS's of all time. I would put it right up there with Starcraft 2. Matter of fact I preferr it OVER Starcraft 2. I prayed that Big Huge Games would make a sequel to this game and felt they could have really carved out a good niche for themselves as a top developer of quality RTS's ala Blizzard in some respects. They made a sequel called Rise of Nations Rise of Legends but it was set in sort of a fantasy world. The original was so great becuase you get full Air(stealth bombers, fighter jets..), land (tanks, infantry, ect) and sea (nuke subs even).
Instead after years of silence I hear they are secretly working on an RPG and they hired the famous Ken Rolston(sp?) who helped develop the story Elder Scrolls title. As if just hiring the writter is an instant win, it's not!. KOA was in development for YEARS and as we've seen 330,000 copies sold where they needed to sell about 3million. BHG why, oh why, did you deviate from the RTS field?? We've got enough RPG with elves, goblins and magic but you had the market cornered on RTS based on real life military units. Not to mention they completly innovated with things like civilization borders.
Too bad BGH you could have been great had you just embraced your roots!
RON gameplay to remember better days of BHG: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZEmhxXuu5o&feature=related
What a loss to the potential for a truly creative mmorpg.
In a way I was a bit sceptical about this company. Their first projects were super ambitious, the single player game and then the MMO. For a company that hasn't made any games whatsoever, that's a huge challenge, most developers now start with a phone app or PSN downloadable game and then move up from there.
Also, "almost 400 developers". Jesus christ, for a starting developer that's SO huge. Lots of the best developer studios don't even have that many.
Not always true, if they let it go into bankruptcy, and the assets are surrendered to the state as it looks like they will be. Someone could come in and pick it up for pennies on the dollar.
Also do not count 38 out yet, many companies in new england are sneaky corrupt bastards.
They will intentionally tank a publically held company to throw off the debt, private investors, and any stock holders. Then they turn around and restructure it as a private entity.
This has happened so many times to me lately its not even funny, whats worse is its legal through loopholes in many of them damn yankee states.
Really sad day, as I knew most of the people working at BHG (also laid off) personally.
Although a fellow ex-BHGer had this sort of amazing observation: Copernicus died May 24, 1543
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
To be fair is it possible that someone wait a little while to do that so they could get a good price, SOE could do it to mention one company, like they did with Vanguard.
But it seems like the game is rather like Wow and most companines seems to have realized that the genre need something new.
I hope your right but Im not gonna hold my breath on that one.
Everything you need to know about Elder Scrolls Online
Playing: GW2
Waiting on: TESO
Next Flop: Planetside 2
Best MMO of all time: Asheron's Call - The first company to recreate AC will be the next greatest MMO.
Your biggest mistake in your comments is that you are assuming that it is the U.S. government that lent 38 studios the money. I was not. It was a STATE (which one slips my memory at the moment) that lent them the money. U.S. taxpayers are not responsible...unless the STATE in question asks for a bailout from big brother.
Unfortunately, many STATES do this sort of thing. They lend money or give tax breaks to various companies for all sorts of reasons....some NOT for the betterment of society or business. I would have had much better feeling about 38 Studios if they had gotten all of their seed money from regular investors and not from a STATE. Less reason to question ethics and all.
Let's party like it is 1863!
It's sad news. Feel bad for the entire staff.
Been over 16 years since I started playing RTS games. SC2 is easily one of the worst out there.
Not a studio I've been following, but my sympathies to all affected. I hope everyone lands on their feet.
Agreed... for all the hate that I feel towards EA Games, Bioware and to a certain degree Blizzard, I never want any of the honest good and hard working devs to lose their jobs. As for Ghostcrawler, pardon my French but he can go to Hell.
Nowhere did I say the project was dead.
I agree, somebody will likely buy up the assets -- they're too potentially valuable to go to waste -- but because they didn't arrange a deal before everybody got axed, they won't be gaining the development team that made it.
There are numerous examples of studios being bought out with the staff to some degree intact to enable them to continue working on existing projects or to exploit their talents in other areas. That's obviously not the case here.
38 Studios, for example, retained about 60% of Big Huge games' development team to help finish Reckoning, retrofitted for the Amalur setting. Conversely, whoever scoops up Copernicus is starting with 0% (more than likely of course, people like Schilling, Salvator, and Rolston would be happy to consult, but there's no knowing where many of the people 'on the ground' will be when the project gets started again).
The business decision to acquire the Copernicus assets as cheaply as possible obviously trumped any number of development considerations I guess is what I'm saying. Would that decision have been made if the development team were doing such a great job and the game was in such great shape at this point in time? IMO that seems unlikely, though of course I'm not privy to the discussions going on in corporate board rooms.
KoA would have been a huge disappointment had I ever expected that it would contribute anything significant to the RPG genre.
They essentially tried to replicate what worked but was already showing it's age in an MMO and tried to port it over to a single player game. Why anyone would do this is beyond me. Single player RPGs as a solo activity offer so much more than MMOs. Not only did they get it backwards but they were so confident in this idea that they thought the IP would than be worth launching an MMO shortly afterwards. It still seems ridiculous to me that people (especially highly thought of “experts”) could invest so much into such a backwards concept.
Don't care.
38 Studios made one very forgettable game and were likely on their way (if they ever could've finished the project) to releasing an equally derivative MMO.
If disasters like this and TOR discourage uninspired mega-corp efforts... I'm all for it. I used to feel differently, but now I feel like the more $$$ involved, the less creativity and risk-taking we'll find in the game.
yeah, I know what you mean about the money. I think a balance is good. We do want projects that are heavily funded in order to provide great games, but we also want small dev companies to be able to put games together. Though I dont think that lots of money always ends up with crappy games, it does seem to be the trend; unfortunately.