They seem to be dead. If you have to been to any gaming website today you have likely already seen this announcement. 38 Studios and Big Huge Games are the folks that made Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning, the single player RPG that came out last February to moderate success, but apparently it wasn't successful enough. About a week ago there was a lot of news about how the 38 Studios couldn't pay for the loan they got for Kingdom of Amalur from Rhode Island. They were trying to convincing the state of Rhode Island that they still have enough going for them to pay off that loan, probably speaking of Project Copernicus, but there was a press conference in Rhode Island today and they said they didn't believe that 38 Studios would be able to pay off those loans. Today 38 Studios revealed that they have had to implement company wide lay offs and now everyone from 38 Studios and their subsidiary Big Huge Games are out of work.

All of this information comes from other gaming websites and even I am relaying information from Rock Paper Shotgun and they relayed some of their information Gamasutra. It's sad to see this all go so poorly for Big Huge Games, especially since Kingdom of Amalur was by no means a terrible game. According to a Rhode Island Governor they would have needed to sell three million copies of Kingdom of Amalur to pay off the loan and they definitely did not do that. It's a bit ironic that I was writing about Project Copernicus less than a week ago and I thought that it looked to have better chances of success than the Elder Scrolls MMO, but now that is gone with the rest. I hope most of those developers find new homes quickly among other studios and if you want to check out more look at the links above or below. Thanks for reading.


Sources:
Gamasutra Post
Rock Paper Shotgun Post 

-Written by Sean Cargle