Entire 38 Studios Staff Laid Off, Effective Immediately

[piinyouri]

I'm glad they got to make a great game like Amalur before going.

 

[Something Amyss]

Well that went downhill fast, Still I guess it was kind of expected considering they were betting on a fantasy game not only being able to compete in a market with WOW and Skyrim but also being able to go full on MMO after only one game. It just seems like they were expecting way too much out of a new IP that didn't have all the much going for it in a very over-crowed market. May as well be trying to bank an entire company on a brand new Modern Military Shooter IP when you got the resident Godzilla and Kingkong Battlefield 3 and COD fighting in the background.

Uhhh...they DID compete. They sold above expectations. Nobody was expecting this to be a WoW or Skyrim killer.

Come on.

 

[Xenominim]

...

At the same time, I'm not really sure hubris is to blame. Hi-Rez Studios managed to stay afloat with Global Agenda and has recently launched Tribes: Ascend. Granted, it's free-to-play, but some developers have been able to dip their toe into the MMO market from Day One and to survive the experience.

My guess is part of the problem really was Amalur's base concept. Yet another Fantasy game in a market that's already saturated with elves and gnomes and goblins.

Some of the most profitable new games today are free to play. I call them free to pay b/c there are certainly a lot of ways to spend money in most F2P games.

Yeah but here's another thing, Global Agenda and Tribes are not MMOs. Both of them are just multiplayer shooters. Global Agenda has a hub area where you can fly around and chat to people while buying stuff, and it has a very small open area that functions mostly as tutorial which does work like an MMO. But that ceases to be useful after level 10 or so. After that you just do the same kind of shooter stuff you see in other games, 16 on 16 or less, and 4 player co-op.

Tribes doesn't even have the hub area or tutorial zone, it's just a multiplayer shooter. It's fun, but neither one is anymore an MMO than Call of Duty is, and so have a lot less costs associated I'm assuming.

 

[chadachada123]

My heart goes out to those workers. Hopefully they'll find employment in other studios or will have the resources to make their own studio.

 

[Artemicion]

That blows, but from the amount of support being provided by the numerous companies, it sounds like most of the employees will be able to land on their feet. So there's that, at least.

 

[doctorjackal777]

That's a real shame~ I loved KoA, I haven't finished it yet, but that's the ADD talking and not the quality of the game. In fact I have both KoA and Skyrim and I enjoyed KoA a million times more than Skyrim. KoA is bright, colorful has interesting quests and creatures in it, and Skyrim well, imo it looks terrible~ The color pallet is as gray/brown as so many other games now, and I know the game world is probably bigger than KoA but I'm really not looking forward to having to trudge through a million identical snowy field/mountains to get there. Also FPSword has always been imo been a shitty idea. Yes you can go to third person if you want but then your character slides around the world all weird like.

Anyway long story short I'm really sad they've gone out of business~ They made a great game, and everyone turned their nose up at it, and didn't give it a chance.
I hope the employee get work in other studio, they obviously have talent in game making so I think they'll bring something great to whatever team they join in he future~

EDIT: Been reading some of the other comments and am surprised at the amount of 'oh maybe it'll go down in price now and I'll buy a copy' Well it's to fucking late now guys! If you were interested in the game you should have bought a copy when it first came out, that would have actually helped the studio stay together! Buying a copy now, though you should do it anyway cause it is an awesome game that you should play, cause the price might go down is just augh! The reason so many game studios are struggling is because people don't buy games when they're released anymore, they wait until it gets to a point where from the studio's financial point of view it doesn't matter anymore.

 

[SeatedSkeleton]

Wha...?

Basically "To avoid the possibility of retrenchment, youre all fired."

Maybe this is a local language thing, but around here I wouldnt call that "avoiding" the possibility of retrenchment... more like "ensuring". Does "retrenched" not equal "fired" over there in USAland?

Nope, in Australia you would know it as being made redundant, which carries with it a lot of other entitlments and obligations. Being fired you just get paid your notice and that's it. By firing the staff they have saved a lot of extra money on entitlements that the would have otherwise have owed. So they are getting screwed twice.

That's how it would work here in Oz anyway. But then again we have a decent living minimum wage among other things so it could be different in the US

Don't you have to have done something to be fired over here though? I always thought it was illegal to just fire people with no cause, i've had friends that have sued employers and won for that very thing.

yep, you're right. prob gave the wrong impression there. in Oz the employees would have almost certainly been made redundant in this situation. i was just talking in the context of the US, presumably the US system is a lot less fair for employees.

OT: it is sad. i thought KoA was pretty good ignoring some flaws. Was looking forward to a bunch of improvements the 'inevitable' sequal.

 

[oppp7]

I need to ask my sister about this. I'm pretty sure she knows one of these guys and EA used underhanded business tactics to cheat everyone out of money. I'll edit in the answer in a bit...
Edit: Ok she's not answering. Ignore this post.

 

[RPGxMadness]

The interesting thing is that some people already sort of knew this was going to happen...

http://youtu.be/KQRxxd74yCk

 

[Callate]

Rrk... Y'know, I'm usually sorry when something like this happens- I don't like to see people lose their jobs, I've generally heard that Amalur was not at all a bad first effort, the industry is rarely stronger for losing companies that are putting some effort into creative contributions to the medium, and all that.

But I have to confess that part of me is going, "You know, I think if you gave me $75 million I could come up with more than a single game and a trailer (for what will probably now be vaporware) before going under." I may be "armchair quarterbacking", but jeez. It seems like it ought to be possible to keep a modest-sized programming pool in Coke and ramen (so to speak) with the interest on $75 million.

 

[Nimzabaat]

In before "They made a game that sucks therefore deserved to be fired" comments start drowning the thread.

You are the only one, doesn't that make you feel stupid?

I said "In before". Before you start throwing insults around, I suggest you learn how to read.

Must be my hatred for pointless "in before" posts talking.


...and they are pointless. Do you think anyone thinks you're clever by predicting what others will post?

Actually failing to predict what others post Most are lamenting how such a great game could have been deemed a failure.

 

[Blade_125]

Well, this will sound mean but we didn't need another damn MMO and maybe this will be a lesson to other start ups trying to enter the market with an MMO. Maybe it will be a lesson to established companies too, most MMO's don't make it and the overhead is high. Hope all the employees find another, more stable company soon.

Also, why is KoA still at $60? This should be seeing a price cut soon and then I will buy it.

Look for sales. I bought my copy about a month ago for $40. Also Steam and gamespot had sales at $40 even before that (I got mine for the PS3).

Considering the game is not likely to get any more patches (which I have read that it needs one for balance issues), it is no longer worth $40.

I won't disagree with that (although I've only found one real bug in the game so far).

I will also bet it will drop in price again pretty soon.

 

[Icehearted]

For the record, games no longer rule the industry, developers no longer decide how games are developed, and consumers are nothing more than wallets to be exploited.

Thank god we have these publishers calling the shots. Heaven forbid the industry doesn't collapse again.

 

[jon_sf]

Don't you have to have done something to be fired over here though? I always thought it was illegal to just fire people with no cause, i've had friends that have sued employers and won for that very thing.

Nope. For a lot of jobs, an employer can fire an employee for any reason, or no reason. It's called at-will employment [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment]. I work in software (though not in the game industry) and that's the way my employment contract works.

However, there's a big tangle of law about this that varies from state to state. It's unlawful to fire someone on the basis of discrimination, which can be tricky to prove or disprove. There are some other exceptions depending on where you live, and where the company is headquartered, etc. As is true with most legal stuff, it's complicated.


Regarding KoA, that sucks. I've played the game through and enjoyed it, though I wouldn't put it on my top-10 list. I thought the combat was nicely done, and it was fun to feel like an acrobatic badass even as a wizard-like character. I'm sure Turbine will pick up some of the ex-employees, and it's heartening to see other tech companies pitch in to support those laid off.

 

[RandV80]

well, that sucks. It's a pretty bad state for the industry when you can't break even on a game that sells 1.2 mil. Dev costs NEED to go down. It also would have helped if they hadn't sank a lot of money into that MMO.

A few people have been saying stuff luck this but I don't think it's really a reflection of the industry. Maybe I'm wrong but from the outside 38 Studios seemed to have the makings of a big budget dot bomb era web startup. The requirement to sell 3 million games to break even probably had a lot to do with ambitious MMO development before they even got their first game out the door. Now I haven't played KoA, but was this really a game that need a full time staff of almost 400 employees to create? Not to mention having big names on board like RA Salvatore. Seems to me like they thought with some startup money from a baseball player they could skip the baby steps and immediately become the next Bioware.

As for the employees, it's sad they went 3 weeks without pay before getting fired, but someone please tell me at least the CEO's got to bail with their money!

 

[Li Mu]

Numerous unaffiliated gaming companies such as PopCap, Cryptic, Gearbox,and EA have already begun to offer their support, immediately considering applicants from affected ex-38 Studios employees.

Well it's great to see support from the other game companies.
And LOOK! EA is offering support!

I bet that upsets a lot of Escapist readers who like to think of EA as the gaming Antichrist.
Imagine that! EA is staffed by human beings who also want to help others and not diabolical rapists, murderers and paedophiles.



[disclosure; While I do not support the general idiocy shown in many of EA's decisions, I do like to keep an open mind and not write them off as inherently evil, as many Escapists tend to do.]

 

[lacktheknack]

For the record, games no longer rule the industry, developers no longer decide how games are developed, and consumers are nothing more than wallets to be exploited.

Thank god we have these publishers calling the shots. Heaven forbid the industry doesn't collapse again.

Welcome to capitalism, where people ARE walking wallets (seriously, that's the idea) and products are developed according to demand.

You're not part of the majority demand, get used to it. I have.