Amid Controversy, 38 Studios Declares Bankruptcy - UPDATED

[llafnwod]

So much for nationalizing the arts.

 

[ThunderCavalier]

Those kind of numbers in liability are really cringe-worthy, especially in our economy.

I'm just wondering how a simple bankruptcy spiraled into such a big loss of money the only way you could possibly lose any more that fast was if you remade the Titanic and sent it directly to the Arctic Circle.

 

[weirdee]

if anything, this was just a hideous waste of time and money caused by whoever was leading the charge for investing that much in a stale idea

we can't even say that it was worth the risk because they didn't bring anything new to the table

 

[Gather]

Hate saying it but I expected this to happen to the company. It developed an excellent game in my personal opinion but you don't come up with 75 million dollars out of thin air. RoK; you IP you, you made a wonderful game. May you rest in peace.

 

[zombiesinc]

Damn, I had no idea they were so far gone, financially anyway.

Hopefully things don't get any worse. >_>

 

[AKDread]

this is just one giant financial clusterf*ck

 

[Graill]

KOA would have been decent had they included any type of keyboard/moue binding. A huge game in scope i am told. I had 20 folks talk to me about this title, we all agreed it was a poor PC port from a console game and did not allow a huge number of keybinds, many of them hardcoded to what the devs wanted, primarily a gamepad setup. This contributed to the games huge failure, which in turn resulted in massive loss of revenue to 38 studios.

Word of mouth comes back to bite devs in the ass, yet they never learn.

 

[Clearing the Eye]

No doubt many sleepless nights are being had by more than a few people over this mess.

 

[Korolev]

They went in too big, too fast. They should have started slightly smaller, built up a few good games and a reputation so that they wouldn't have to essentially risk it all developing an MMO.

Apparently, they only made Kingdoms of Amalur as way to secure more funding for their MMO, which was the original goal of the studio. Not only that, but their deal with EA stipulated that in return for a chunk of money for the MMO, 38 Studios would relinquish all sales profits and royalties generated by Kingdoms of Amalur to EA. So essentially, their one game that they put out was done so in return for some funding.

The MMO dream is like a deep sea angler fish, luring you in with promises of WoW like money. Few ever get it. It's a bad idea to leap into business with the sole intent of making an MMO right off the bat. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it's a bad idea.

 

[Hawk of Battle]

This thread title had me slightly worried for a while there, I thought it meant 38 different studios had suddenly gone bankrupt. But no, it's just some guys who I've never heard of, crisis over.

 

[MetalDooley]

This contributed to the games huge failure,

The sad thing is that the game sold somewhere in the region of 1.3 million which in normal circumstances would be considered a fantastic return for a brand new IP

 

[Paradoxrifts]

After read the sort of seemingly unending supply of industry horror stories that accompany a new Trenches webcomic every update, it sort of makes me wonder when companies like 38 Studios go under whether they crashed then burned precisely because right up to the point that they ran out of money the company was actually doing everything by the book, crossing their t's and dotting their i's by paying their workers the right wage for the hours worked and not leaning on people for unpaid overtime and the like.

 

[Artemis923]

Moral of the story:

MMO's suck, don't make them.