38 Studios

» see 38studios.com as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the eulogy ~

38 studios was the kind of game studio whose collapse you read about on engadget the morning after, not the kind you ever interacted with. for whatever reason, by 2012 i was 28 and working in software in turkey and the rhode-island-state-loan-default story landed on the front page of every gaming and political news site in the english-speaking internet for around two weeks. honestly, the studio itself had not really registered on my radar before the bankruptcy. kingdoms of amalur: reckoning had come out in february 2012 to good reviews and i had seen the reviews but had not played it. then in june it turned out the studio was gone.

curt schilling (the boston red sox pitcher, world series ring in 2004 and 2007, jersey number 38) had been a hardcore everquest player for years and wanted to build an mmorpg himself. for some reason, he founded green monster games on september 8 2006 in maynard massachusetts with his own money and a small investor group, renamed it 38 studios in 2007 (his jersey number), and brought in r.a. salvatore for the world-building plus todd mcfarlane for the visual design. ken rolston (schilling's longtime everquest contact) came in to lead the design of project copernicus.

the strategy was a real mmo on the scale of world of warcraft, planned to ship in 2012. in those days the mmo market was mostly already settled around blizzard's monthly subscription base, and a new entrant was facing a steep climb. for some reason, by 2008 the studio realized it could not sustain the four-year copernicus development cycle without revenue in the meantime, so it bought big huge games (a baltimore studio led by brian reynolds and ken rolston) in may 2009 and pivoted that team into making a single-player rpg set in the same fictional universe. that single-player game became kingdoms of amalur: reckoning.

~ the dossier ~

~ the origin ~

for whatever reason, the rhode island deal in 2010 was the moment the whole thing took on a public-policy dimension. governor donald carcieri's economic development corporation offered 38 studios a $75 million state-bond guarantee in july 2010 in exchange for relocating from maynard to providence and bringing 450 jobs to the state. by then, schilling and the studio took the deal, moved into a new providence office, and grew headcount to around 400 employees by 2012. the bond payments started in early 2012 against the assumption that reckoning's release in february would cover the cost.

kingdoms of amalur: reckoning shipped on february 7 2012 across pc plus the two big consoles of the era (xbox 360 and ps3). the reviews were strong (around 80 metacritic across the platforms) and the gameplay was a real attempt at synthesizing the world-of-warcraft combat feel into a single-player elder-scrolls-style structure. honestly, around 1.3 million copies sold in the first 90 days. anyway, the studio's cost structure required closer to 2 million copies to break even on reckoning alone, and the broader copernicus mmo project was still around 75% complete with no near-term revenue path.

~ the day it died ~

for some reason, the studio missed a $1.125 million payment to the rhode island economic development corporation on may 1 2012. that triggered a public default situation that the rhode island governor at the time (lincoln chafee) handled by making the situation public on may 14 2012 in a press conference, which spooked the studio's remaining bridge-financing prospects. by then, schilling tried to raise emergency capital through the rest of may but could not close.

38 studios laid off its entire staff on may 24 2012 and filed chapter 7 bankruptcy on june 7 2012 with $150.7 million in liabilities owed to 1,079 creditors. honestly, the around 400 employees got no severance and were left in a relocated city with mortgages and rental contracts based on a job that no longer existed. the providence economic development office had to administer an emergency support program for the laid-off employees through the rest of 2012.

~ the long tail ~

for whatever reason, the rhode island state legal fight took years. anyway, the state filed civil claims against schilling personally plus against the law firms and financial advisors who had structured the original 2010 loan deal. by 2017 most of the settlement payouts had been collected (around $50 million recovered against the $75 million original loan) but the political fallout cost rhode island governor lincoln chafee his re-election bid and burned multiple state economic-development officials.

kingdoms of amalur: reckoning got a remaster from thq nordic on september 8 2020 (the kingdoms of amalur: re-reckoning release), which is the closest the underlying ip got to a second life. for some reason, the copernicus mmo never shipped and the underlying code base was sold off in the bankruptcy auction without finding a buyer who wanted to revive it. curt schilling himself has been mostly out of public-facing gaming work since the collapse and was eventually fired from his espn baseball-analyst job in 2016 over unrelated social media posts.

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