38 Studios and Big Huge Games‘ product wasn’t bad, but the reception of Kingdoms of Amalur wasn’t good enough to survive.

38 Studios had two key issues: chronic spending alone can be deadly, but if you top it off with mismanagement, you are ripe to run into problems. No wonder the studio closed its doors in 2012, leaving 75 million dollars of debt behind. Many devs didn’t get their last paycheck, but surprisingly, Bloomberg reports that nine years after the studio died, people got some of that owed money!

After nine years of legal arguments, the latest bankruptcy documents show it has been decided each employee of the company will receive a minimum of 14% or a maximum of 20% of what they were owed. The paychecks began arriving this week, but most of them could have landed in the wrong hands, as the recipients have moved a bit around in the gaming industry in the past near-decade.

Curt Schilling formed 38 Studios. The baseball player (!) had an idea to create a World of Warcraft-killer MMORPG. In 2011, he agreed a75 million dollar deal with Rhode Island to relocate the studio from Massachusetts and create 450 jobs. With interest, the loan totalled 112.6 million bucks that had to be repaid by 2020.

The studio released a single game: Kingdoms of Amalur sold 1.2 million copies in its three months. That wasn’t good enough: three million copies would have had to be sold if the studio wanted to break even. This total wasn’t reached quickly enough, leading the studio to struggle with repaying the loan. Even the first cheque bounced at first, and in this dire situation. 38 Studios released a trailer for an MMO set in the world of Amalur, called Project Copernicus… but a few days later, the studio laid off all 379 of their staff and closed its doors. Rhode Island taxpayers had to foot the bill, and it resulted in allegations of fraud and criminal activity against the studio, but no criminal charges were ever brought.

The Kingdoms of Amalur IP ended up at Embracer (via its THQ Nordic branch), remastering the game with a new DLC. Project Copernicus never got anywhere, but knowing Embracer, it might happen, given how ridiculously fast their expansion rate is.

Source: PSL