This week has been a bad week for Rhode Island-based 38 Studios. The former Green Monster Games, founded by World Series hero Curt Shilling has stumbled towards insolvency at a rapid rate. You might remember 38 Studios as the development team behind Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, which was released earlier this year. That game turned out to be so aggressively mediocre that Rock gave up halfway through his review, not exactly a harbinger of quality.
Before setting up shop in Rhode Island, 38 Studios was based in Massachusetts, where Schilling played for the Boston Red Sox. However, the state of Rhode Island promised 38 Studios an enormous amount of state-backed loans, in return for the promise of hundreds of jobs and a huge tax flow. Things haven't exactly worked out that well.
On May 1st, the studio failed to pay the $1.125 million loan payment to the state Economic Division that was required of them. This led to Schilling asking Rhode Island for more cash infusions, in order to keep his company solvent. The state declined to make any more commitments to the fledgling company.
This, in turn, led to 38 Studios being unable to meet their payroll for this past week. According to Joystiq, a good number of temporary and part-time employees of 38 Studios were let go, and remaining staff was unable to comment on the situation.
Perhaps most damning of all, 38 Studios hand delivered a check for the $1.125 million owed to the Rhode Island EDC.
The check bounced.
Read more here:
WPRI.com- Rhode Island News
BostonHerald.com
oh shit!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.giantbomb.com/news/report-38-studios-lays-off-entire-staff/4172/
Wow. That was much quicker than I expected. That was such a terrible deal in the first place, seemingly made by people without much knowledge of how the games industry works. Huge shame that all those people are out jobs now.
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