38 Studios, Big Huge Games Lay Off Entire Staff

379 employees are now without work.

Things haven’t been exactly sunshine and roses for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning developers 38 Studios and subsidiary Big Huge Games. The Curt Schilling run studio has been making national headlines for all the wrong reasons, initially missing the first payment of a $75 million dollar loan to the state of Rhode Island – the repercussions for which are starting to hit home.

Yesterday all 379 employees of 38 Studios and Big Huge games received noticed that they were being laid off, effective immediately with the latter studio closing its doors completely. WPRI managed to get their hands on the notice, which follows:

“The Company is experiencing an economic downturn. To avoid further losses and possibility of retrenchment, the Company has decided that a companywide lay off is absolutely necessary. These layoffs are non-voluntary and non-disciplinary. This is your official notice of lay off, effective today, Thursday, May 24th, 2012.”

The news comes as a surprise to many gamers, especially since the studios’ most recent release, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, was considered both a critical and commercial success, selling somewhere between 400,000 to just over a million copies. As impressive as that number is, it just wasn’t enough. According to governor Lincoln Chafee, “the game failed” and that the Reckoning needed to sell somewhere “in the three million range just to break even.”

If the studio defaults on the loan, taxpayers would be on the hook to make up the difference, though the state would gain control of the Amalur IP.

PixlBit wishes the staff of both companies well and hopes that they don't find themselves unemployed for long.

#Layoffs #Amalur #Default

Michael117

05/25/2012 at 12:37 PM

Yay for the AAA model, right? 3 million just to break even? All the years of work they put into it, and after all those copies sold (it sold a lot of copies as you said) and at the end of the day all they have to show for it is some douche governor saying, "That game failed", the state owns the IP, and 379 people are without jobs.

Jon Lewis Staff Writer

05/25/2012 at 12:45 PM

Hearing this made me really sad. I haven't bought KoA:R yet mainly due to the fact that I dont really have the time for it, but its a game on my wishlist for the future. I feel a lot of gamers might have been in the same boat but its unfair that due to selling only 1.4m, its considered a failure. Plus, i feel pretty terrible for the hundreds of people who lost their jobs because of this.

Julian Titus Senior Editor

05/25/2012 at 01:52 PM

I'm sure those numbers would have been fine had the company not been developing this MMO for years and years. This is really terrible news. Amalur is great and those guys are talented.

05/25/2012 at 02:01 PM

Good point Julian. Do you think a similar misfortune could happen to the Elder Scrolls Online MMO? Not necessarily the bankruptcy and company-wide layoff aspect of it, but as far as the fact that ES Online has been an MMO in development for a looong time just like Amalur was. Kind of a different topic, but it seemed related somehow when you mentioned that Amulur was an MMO at first and was in development for a long time until it switched over to its current single player design.

Elder Scrolls Online, like Amalur, has been an MMO in dev for a long time but Elder Scrolls is actually continuing on with the MMO design. Is there any foreshadowing there of some bad future ES Online misfortunes? I assume Amalur abandoned the MMO design to try and appeal to a bigger audience or cash in on that open world RPG fanbase. ES Online is just continuing to do what it's doing and I can't imagine how much money has been poured into it or if it will appeal to enough people.

Esteban Cuevas Staff Alumnus

05/25/2012 at 06:58 PM

Such sad news for such a talented studio. The AAA model cannibalizes developers who don't deserve it and this is just unfair to those who were employees of 38 Studios and Big Huge Games.

PixlBit