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Looks Like 38 Studios is Close to Bankruptcy
niceguy3978
Member UncommonPosts: 2,051
According to a local news report from Rhode Island. Apparently the state government is trying to help the company from becoming insolvent. http://www.gamespot.com/news/kingdoms-of-amalur-reckoning-dev-may-be-in-trouble-report-6376803
The most surprising thing about that, to me, was the fact that KOA only sold 330k copies. That and the state government is attempting to help out the company.
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"won a strong critical reception"
OK
KoA was pretty terrible, imo, so I wouldn't be surprised. Aside from Curt Schilling funding them, and he didn't seem too worried about money, but who knows.
Game was horrible so no suprise.
Grim Dawn, the next great action rpg!
http://www.grimdawn.com/
They didn't do a good job marketing KOA all. Regardless the quality of the game their marketing for it was awful.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
I didn't even know it released.
Oderint, dum metuant.
This, the game was an absolute borefest! with graphics even worse than WoW today.
Those news reports are sensationalistic with filthy yellow journalism. Pretty standard for the msm these days.
That said, its clear that 38 Studios is likely in some kind of financial trouble.
RI documents, and other sources had once reported Copernicus slated for launch Q4 2012. The agreement also requires a certain number of jobs to be created in certain time frames which apparently they haven't met. There are penalties for this, but not greater than the cost to hire them. Other recent news is that 38 Studios just pulled out of E3.
While EA says that Amalur was a "success" its sales numbers doesn't look to have been as good as 38 Studios would have liked based on previous comments also; perhaps enough to fund KoA: Reckoning 2, but not enough to fund the MMO.
38 Studios also recently hired a couple of executives to make sure the game gets released on time and on budget.
So putting all that info together, its likely that the MMO has been delayed. Either development is not happening quick enough, they are having trouble finding enough people to fill the jobs in an area really not known for high -tech / game development, or in light of recent MMO industry happenings, they have had to redesign perhaps outdated parts of their MMO. Thus, the projected financial shortfall.
It would be a shame for the company to fail, but if it does get to that point, they could always seek private investment and dilute their ownership, which is why they went with a loan to begin with. Sure, Curt & Co won't retain 100% ownership of the company, but its better than going into receivership.
A shame, KoA was a decent game. It was as if someone surgically removed all the suck out of the Fable franchise and replaced it with functional gameplay and substance.
Was it OMGWTFBBQAMAZING? No. But it was fun, had some gorgeous looking artwork, and showcased a promising franchise.
Oh well, such is life.
I was one of those people who was turned off by EA's involvement in activating* the game on the PC (don't care to play my Western RPGs on consoles). I would have given it a shot but for that, and since I'm not particularly special, I'm sure that applies to other people as well. I was also a bit miffed at the idea that Schilling has portrayed himself as a fellow gamer, but decided to defend what EA had done instead of telling his customers he'd try to negotiate a more player-friendly approach.
This is what happens when you announce big names like McFarlan and Salvatore and then release a singleplayer WoW copy with nothing that seems to point at either of them being involved, outside of Salvatore writing out of game lore. The artwork had the appearance of literally being ripped from WoW and the ingame dialog could have been matched by a fourth rate freelance writer at scale. The game itself ws just a boring hack-and-slash "Kill 10 rats" borefest.
-Letting Derek Smart work on your game is like letting Osama bin Laden work in the White House. Something will burn.-
-And on the 8th day, man created God.-
http://www.wpri.com/dpp/news/local_news/providence/gov-ri-working-to-keep-schilling-company-38-studios-viable?2
Looks like they failed to make one of their payments.
Gonna get ugly if they don't get bridge financing...
The final sales figures of KoA: Reckoning, developed by their other studio, has some but little to do in the financial problems of the R.I. studio. The R.I. loan was setup to be self sufficient for the MMO only and to bring it to market. There are problems with the MMO / R.I. studio, as Reckoning was successful on its own.
Really not looking good, and the new story said they got bad marks from auditors last year on whether they were financially viable.
Looks like someone pissed away a lot of cash, with little to show for it so far.
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Nowadays, 300k sales isn't really a success for any game, especially a high profile marketed-to-the-ends-of-the-Earth game. Especially one touted as "competition for Skyrim" ( which it in no way, shape, or form was comparable to ANY TES game in mechanics or anything else ) in advertisements and PR pieces. When you take into consideration development costs, salaries for those bignames, over the top advertisement blitz,etc., I'd be surprised if they even came close to breaking even.
-Letting Derek Smart work on your game is like letting Osama bin Laden work in the White House. Something will burn.-
-And on the 8th day, man created God.-
Tis a shame.
I was pleasently surpised with Reckoning, and was looking forward to new titles from them.
Here's hoping they can right the ship!
Well, in their defense, there isn't much out there or on the horizon that can compete with Skyrim. At least, considering newer games, that is.
In my opinion, anyway.
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
Yes, I agree the sales must match up to the development costs, but I'm pretty sure the official numbers are 440K sold in the US across consoles not including PC/digital/steam & Origin. EA considered Amalur a success in their recent public investors report citing the game as part of their quarterly profits, however who knows if they will fund a Reckoning2, or how much of those profits went back to the devs?
Their first single player RPG that they released was a very generic run of the mill game, I lost any interest in this compay from that point on. Since their MMO is based on that realm I am not interested in the slightest.
they need to do a steam sale of that game stupid cheap.
theres too much data valve has on how well those sales work for developers.
Games i'm playing right now...
"In short, I thought NGE was a very bad idea" - Raph Koster talking about NGE on his blog at raphkoster.com
I dont know what they spent to make KoA, but it appears they clearly lost alot of money on it.....Curt probably just bit off more than he could chew trying to do both a massive single player game and MMO at the same time......Its funny how quickly millions of dollars disappear in this industry making games.
Thats what they get for making a pact with the devil (EA). i hope they go under.
it really makes you wonder what these people do with all this money..lighting cigars with 100 dollar bills is not really cost effective.
sad, my girlfriend loves their game and any game that makes her stop playing the sims is cool with me