38 Studios - All Staff Laid Off

Incredibly foolhardy to spend so much on a first title that you need 3 million copies sold simply to break even.

From my limited reading of the reviews of both, isn't KoA a form of Diablo 3 but in third-person perspective with better combat (button rather than click mashing!) and without constant online connection. Surprised it did not sell the same or even better than D3.

Heartfelt message from Tiberius, very sad.

Daniel.

darklord said:

I do wonder if the demo was a mistake, I was planning on buying the game straight away until I played the demo. After that I decided to wait for a sale instead.

I wonder how many others were the same?

Daniel.

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I'm the same. The demo was TERRIBLE. It actually convinced me I wasn't interested at ALL. Terrible game that almost suckered me in. I really must thank them for that shit demo.

SpoonFULL said:

isn't KoA a form of Diablo 3 but in third-person perspective with better combat (button rather than click mashing!) D3.

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No.

It was more like World of Warcraft meets a generic semi-open world action RPG. The graphics were slightly upgraded wow characters, the environment used the exact same aesthetic as wow, every quest in the demo was a fetch quest or a 'Kill 10 of these' that could have come right from wow. But hey! The combat was actiony and you could roll around on the ground around your enemies in full plate armor like all the kiddies like these days!

SpoonFULL said:

From my limited reading of the reviews of both, isn't KoA a form of Diablo 3 but in third-person perspective with better combat (button rather than click mashing!) and without constant online connection. Surprised it did not sell the same or even better than D3.

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The two don't seem comparable to me. KoA is more like a single player version of WoW - the world is huge, areas are distinct and each feature their own crafted lore and design style. Combat is more like a beat-em-up than gauntlet/diablo. KoA does suffer from quest fatigue though - it's really like it should have been an MMO where you spend a larger chunk of time in a region, but as a single player game it gets very formulaic when you enter a new area and you know that you're going to find x number of quests which are more or less the same as the quests you just did in the last area, but with different names.

It's not a major flaw for me, especially if you pace yourself, but it kind of needed to be either multiplayer or concentrate more on overarching quests than having so many discrete areas. But the world is beautiful and huge and it is suited for the explorer/collect lore type games that I am one of.

So it outperformed sales projections/expectations but needed 3 times as much as that to break even. Considering one of the complaints I've had and heard was repetitive content and the game dragging on at times, it seems they could have and should have spent less on the project and would have produced a better game for doing so. This also pretty much screams incompetence in the management side of things if the industry experts projections could be beaten and the game sell rather well compared to other first products in the genre and they would still find themselves only about 1/3 of the way to profitability.

This is sad news. The game had its flaws, but I must say that I had some fun with KoA, and in particular with the pirate extension Legends of Dead Kel.

Best wishes to everyone laid off. I hope they can hit the ground running and find a new job quickly.

This is the story that keeps on giving.

This is truly a crash and utterly burn situation. wow. just wow.

TheMadGamer said:

This is the story that keeps on giving.

This is truly a crash and utterly burn situation. wow. just wow.

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That doesn't seem... legal; particularly the whole "told them their homes sold" but were in-fact just paying their mortgages while leaving them with the liability if the company stopped paying. Wow.

Whoa, talk about a rapid crash and burn. They were promising some kind of ultimate rpg in the early stages, and they got good buzz even at rpg watch. Then when I saw the first screen shots my interest evaporated, it looked too much like WoW. Finally, watching game play videos was enough to tell me this game definitely wasn't for me, and they ended up going out of business.

WTF is with the commenters on the Verge acting like the state screwed Curt Schilling? Are they schills for schilling or something or do they not know how "backing" a loan works and what security against default is and they're just mouthing off cause guvment is teh devil.

TheMadGamer said:

This is the story that keeps on giving.

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Also, http://www.gametrailers.com/side-mi...o-disclose-layoffs-will-face-financial-audit/

I'm smelling a scandal here and maybe some fraud with a side of embezzlement. The more info that comes out does not show a healthy picture. Just another modern day business as usual.

jhwisner said:

WTF is with the commenters on the Verge acting like the state screwed Curt Schilling? Are they schills for schilling or something or do they not know how "backing" a loan works and what security against default is and they're just mouthing off cause guvment is teh devil.

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I don't want to sound supportive of Schilling but the government may very well have contributed with a poorly structured agreement which called for minimum and escalating headcounts. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying 38 were managed well (I can't tell from here) but the state requiring them to hire more and more people may have made matters worse by forcing 38 to spend more, even when 38 knew they should spend less. Once they got into trouble, it made it impossible to control the debt.

From The Verge:

"The agreement states that the company has to "provide 125 full-time jobs in Rhode Island" within a year of November 2010. Another 175 jobs need to be provided by November 2012 and the final 150 jobs by 2013. For every job they fail to provide by deadline 38 Studios has to pay $7,500 a year."

I would not lay the blame on the government deal alone, though. After reading a bit more, I am also astounded about Curt Schilling's naiveté, in particular his idea that hiring famous people will automatically translate into success: "Publishing great games has more to do with the people you have on board than it does with the cash and ideas you bring to the table".

How sad it would be if expert knowledge, vision and leadership skills were all meaningless. Also, laying off all these people without advanced notice is repugnant, and the government is not to blame for this particular part of internal mismanagement, even if they share the blame for the financial disaster.

That requirement of 3 million units sold sounds like BS to me, especially since it's coming from a politician. I think selling 1.2m units of a brand new IP with no track record to be a fine accomplishment, and if anybody was expecting more than that, they're dreaming.

I firmly believe that this has very little to do with Reckoning, and everything to do with Project Copernicus (the MMO). I've read reports that it was targeted to be completed by Q2 or Q3 of this year, but instead was going to need at least another year of development. With that unfortunate reality, I could see how somebody could look at the numbers and say, "Well, if Reckoning just sells 3m more copies, we'll be alright and we'll have enough money to make it until then." Yeah, and if only pigs could fly...

I don't think that Reckoning deserves the blame for this fiasco. It was a patch or two away from being a very fine game in my opinion (which, alas, we'll never see now), and I'm not surprised that it's sales surpassed EA's expectations.

I think the blame should be placed squarely on the MMO, and quite frankly if this causes companies to view MMO's with a little more distrust and hesitation and something other than the promised land to infinite riches, well maybe that's one silver lining in this whole disaster...

coyote said:

I would not lay the blame on the government deal alone, though.

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I did say "contributed".

Fantasm said:

That requirement of 3 million units sold sounds like BS to me, especially since it's coming from a politician. I think selling 1.2m units of a brand new IP with no track record to be a fine accomplishment, and if anybody was expecting more than that, they're dreaming. […]

I don't think that Reckoning deserves the blame for this fiasco.

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It might be a fine accomplishment - but that doesn't mean it paid for itself. It was a long and turbulent development (through external forces - I'm not placing blame on BHG themselves). Reckoning definitely doesn't deserve the blame but they may not have positively contributed to the bottom line.

On the other hand, without the MMO, there would have been no money to buy them in the first place and the game wouldn't exist - it would have gone down when THQ cancelled the game.

As for the game itself, it was a decent effort. I am, however, amazed they turned in such generic quests with the source material and experienced RPG developers to hand.

Anyway, agreed that it's time companies realised the dangers and sheer money sinks in MMOs.

darklord said:

I do wonder if the demo was a mistake, I was planning on buying the game straight away until I played the demo. After that I decided to wait for a sale instead.

I wonder how many others were the same?

Daniel.

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Me. Although, it didn't even matter if the game went on sale.

Couchpotato said:

I'm smelling a scandal here and maybe some fraud with a side of embezzlement. The more info that comes out does not show a healthy picture. Just another modern day business as usual.

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I agree. Way too much cavatation going on. This company was not run 'above board.' This isn't to say that any the talent (programmers, artists etc.) were culpuable - as most likely none of them are - but from all the news releases so far it seems pretty obvious that this is NOT just a case of business incompetence.

Dhruin said:

...but the government may very well have contributed with a poorly structured agreement which called for minimum and escalating headcounts.

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Dhruin said:

...but the state requiring them to hire more and more people may have made matters worse by forcing 38 to spend more, even when 38 knew they should spend less. Once they got into trouble, it made it impossible to control the debt.

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C'mon now. Government does NOT have problems spending more. That's just crazy talk. /sarcasm off