Entire 38 Studios Staff Laid Off, Effective Immediately

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OmegaFenix

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Nearly 400 workers across two states are left without work.

After weeks of uncertainty regarding the future of Curt Schilling's 38 Studios, which saw everything from missing paychecks to fleeing executives, every single employee has been officially been laid off.


38 Studios, which employed nearly four hundred workers between its Maryland and Rhode Island offices, have informed employees of their termination through a succinct, impersonal email. "The Company is experiencing an economic downturn," it read. "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."


During a press conference concerning the layoffs, Rhode Island governor Lincoln Chafee blamed the studios' failure on Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning failing to sell three million copies, a sales record that Schilling has previously argued was a great success. "Sales of Reckoning OUTPERFORMED EA's expectations," he wrote on Facebook, "and sold more than 1.2 million units in the game's first 90 days in the market."


Regardless of reason, as of Thursday afternoon, 379 fulltime employees are left without jobs, adding to the indeterminate number of temporary and contract workers terminated last week. The wake of the sudden firings have left the now ex-employees with questions ranging from legally-owed healthcare benefits to compensation for three weeks of heretofore unpaid work.


Numerous unaffiliated gaming companies such as PopCap, Cryptic, Gearbox,and EA have already begun to offer their support, immediately considering applicants from affected ex-38 Studios employees. Twitter has joined the cause as well, with numerous members of the industry asking anyone currently hiring to post openings with the hash tag #38jobs. Facebook users can help, too, via the official support page found here.
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Source: The Escapist

This is really sad but I guess not really unexpected.
 
It is nice to see other companies helping these ex-38 employees.

At least it seems we will be spared another generic MMO.
 
Unfortunately I think they are a victim of their own hubris with far too aggressive an expansion for a brand new company and IP. 400 employees and they've only made one game, really? Just poor business sense. They had a good foundation with Reckoning and if they were more savvy about it that should have lead to many more games in the series with them slowly building up from 50-100 developers as their product became more popular.

This is sad because I really felt Kingdoms of Amalur had potential.
 
MOnk said:
Unfortunately I think they are a victim of their own hubris with far too aggressive an expansion for a brand new company and IP. 400 employees and they've only made one game, really? Just poor business sense. They had a good foundation with Reckoning and if they were more savvy about it that should have lead to many more games in the series with them slowly building up from 50-100 developers as their product became more popular.

This is sad because I really felt Kingdoms of Amalur had potential.
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Yeah it didn't have any issues that could be fixed in a future instalment of the IP. But yeah getting Todd McFarlane & R.A Salvatore in to do work of Plot/Backstory & art could not have been cheap and for a first game in a brand new IP it was a bit much. Hopefully EA has some rights to the IP and we see then maybe giving it another go.
 
Just bad business. Sad to see any developers in the gaming industry go aground. But capitalism is capitalism.
They should have expected this from the beginning when hiring over 350 and gambling everything on Kingdoms of Amalur.
 
If I recall correctly from watching that 'History Of' video from ArenaNet, they only had like 15 employees when they made Guild Wars, even now I'm not sure they have 400 people working on Guild Wars 2.
 
MOnk said:
If I recall correctly from watching that 'History Of' video from ArenaNet, they only had like 15 employees when they made Guild Wars, even now I'm not sure they have 400 people working on Guild Wars 2.
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Yeah, I believe they are still under 300 employees. Bad business plain and simple.
 
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