38 Studios' late payment to RI clears bank; Copernicus set for 2013 (update)
38 Studios didn't pay employees this week, and delivered a check for the overdue funds to Rhode Island before its CFO warned the state that it had insufficient funds to cover it.
Update: 10:45 a.m. PST, In a live press conference, Rhode Island Gov. Chafee said that the $1.125 million check from 38 Studios has cleared the bank. A debt service payment of more than $2.5 million is due Nov. 1. The governor also said that the MMO Project Copernicus was set for June of 2013.
Original Story: Troubles continue to mount for 38 Studios. After requesting additional Rhode Island state assistance, the company was unable to pay its employees this week. It also hand-delivered a check for the overdue $1.125 million to the state's Economic Development Corporation, but company CFO Rick Wester told the EDC that there were insufficient funds to cover the check.
Local Rhode Island station WPRI reports that 38 Studios advised the EDC about its inability to pay its workers. Plus, Joystiq reports that temps and contractors working for the company were let go this week. The company was composed of 379 full-time employees as of March 15, 288 in the state of Rhode Island.
Governor Lincoln Chafee's office said the EDC is willing to accept a check for the overdue payment if the company can provide "readily available funds." The board is set to meet again on Monday, but has not given any definite word on whether or not it will offer assistance to the company.
The Rhode Island government is suffering its own blowback. Keith Stokes, EDC executive director and the architect of the $75 million loan guarantee, resigned on Wednesday. Chafee is stressing that he did not favor the initial loan guarantee, but is now supportive of the company to save taxpayer money. The EDC reportedly put aside $12.8 million of the $75 million in case of default.
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replySteve Watts posted a new article, 38 Studios misses payroll, gives insufficient check to Rhode Island.
38 Studios didn't pay employees this week, and delivered a check for the overdue funds to Rhode Island before its CFO warned the state that it had insufficient funds to cover it.-
This just isn't going well for them... why doesn't EA help them out in favor of making sure the IP survives? That'd be a drop in the bucket for them. Really hope they don't go under and the state gets takes control of the IP... I really love the first game and want to see more from the universe they created, especially what the MMO would look like.
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EA doesn't hold the IP, they only had the rights for the 1st game.
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EA's investment in KoA is minimal. The game was released under EA Partners. All the IP and stuff still belongs to 38 Studios, they're an independant developer.
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That is a lot of employees, how do they not have other projects on the go? Just Amalur?
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I think Mr. Shilling bit off a bit more than he could chew by trying to make an mmo and still to this day not having anything to show for it other than a spin-off action rpg. Reckoning seemed decent from the demo and they must have thought they could float for a while longer by releasing it. It might not have hit the numbers they were looking for so they didn't have enough to cover the check.
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yeah. there was a good discussion about it in the last Bombcast. sad. i really wanted to see them go places, but another pay to play fantasy MMO is not the way to go.
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agreed.
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I thought KoA sold well? Did they get fucked by EA?
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Not horrible, but considering all the praise and Macfarlane I thought it was going to do much better.
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Have you seen McFarlane's art? It's not really that amazing looking either.
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He actually did a pretty good job with Spider-Man, it's just his designs that are really generic
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Looking at wikipedia, Skyrim came out in November I think and KoA came out in February.
While that's not very close together, Skyrim held a lot of peoples interests for a long time (and still does)- so who would drop $60 on another fantasy RPG when they have the newest title by one of the most successful franchises?-
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So, it's Skyrim Jr.?
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After the 2nd area I stopped doing any sidequests at all. Also the combat became easy, there was 1 fight the entire game that was difficult (that elvish witch), other than that it was way to easy. Yeah a sweet combat system is great and all, but when it's not a challenge and you just go through the motions, it's not fun anymore. I found the story lacking as well.
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Just updated the story.
Update: 10:45 a.m. PST, In a live press conference, Rhode Island Gov. Chafee said that the $1.125 million check from 38 Studios has cleared the bank. A debt service payment of more than $2.5 million is due Nov. 1. The governor also said that the MMO Project Copernicus was set for June of 2013.-
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RI gave them a monster loan to move their studios there and bring "jobs" to the state.
KoA wasn't even their game originally, they used a bunch of cash to buyout Big Huge Games and the projects they were working on. One of those was the action RPG Kingdoms of Amalur, they gave it the lore of the MMO they were working on and probably hoped it would have done well.
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>379 full-time employees
Ouch. Thats a shitload of people, think of this: Valve only has 293..
The average dev eats up about 10k a month in wages, benefits and dev costs/kits/pcs x 379 people = holy shit $3,790,000 a month...
its hard for a start up to do an MMO, no wait, IMPOSSIBLE. You need time to gel, sort out the good teams/leads and thats costs money, lots of it.
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